Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay
by Saphroneth
Summary: Harry Potter is a dragon. He's been a dragon for several years, and frankly he's quite used to the idea - after all, in his experience nobody ever comments about it, so presumably it's just what happens sometimes. Magic, though, THAT is something entirely new. Comedy fic, leading on from the consequences of one... admittedly quite large... change. Cover art by amalgamzaku.
1. A Dragon's Perfectly Normal Childhood

"Boy!"

Harry Potter blinked a few times, shaking himself awake, and yawned. "Yes, Uncle Vernon?"

"Get up! I won't have you lazing around with chores to do before school!"

"Yes, Uncle," Harry replied, flexing to get the cricks out, then put his glasses on and turned the handle of his cupboard door. It opened, and he crawled out before curling his tail into a coil to prevent it from bashing into anything.

His wings stayed furled as he made his way into the kitchen, and began making breakfast for the whole Dursley family.

Sometimes, Harry wondered if perhaps his home life was a little bit odd, but it was a little hard to tell. Yes, he hadn't met any other dragons, and he could vaguely remember having not _been_ a dragon at some point, but he'd almost never run into anybody who was the vaguest bit surprised. So perhaps he was a special kind of normal which everyone was used to?

He certainly wasn't like the dragons in the stories in the school library, either. Those dragons were usually big and scary and liked carrying off Princesses and stealing gold, and when they didn't do that and were nice they still grew up very quickly – but Harry was almost eleven, and he was still smaller than his cousin who wasn't even a dragon. He was like those story-book dragons because he liked to live in a lair, perhaps, but it was only the cupboard under the stairs.

As he thought about what they might be doing in school today – it was very nearly the end of their time at primary school, and that meant they might be allowed to do what they wanted – Harry absently ate the eggshells from the fried eggs he'd made, then tipped the eggs onto plates along with rashers of bacon and slices of toast.

Balancing one plate on his back and the other two on his wings, he made his way into the dining room and slid all three onto the table.

"Hm," Aunt Petunia said. "Don't forget to do extra for Dudley, he's a growing boy."

Harry couldn't dispute that – his cousin had certainly been growing for years, mostly outwards. So he nodded, furling his wings in case he knocked anything over. "Yes, Aunt Petunia. Is it all right if I open another packet of bacon?"

"Of course you should open another packet if there's not enough in the open one!" she told him sharply. "Now hurry up!"

* * *

Really, Harry summarized – landing in the playground with a _thump_ ten minutes before the school bell – he could have had it a lot worse.

Oh, sure, sometimes his cousin tried to bully him, but Harry had long since learned that there wasn't really anything they could do to him. Dragons were tough enough that other boys couldn't really hurt him, and if Dudley was being annoying Harry could just fly up onto the roof and wait out the lunch hour there. It got him shouted at, but that wasn't really a huge problem either.

He wasn't really all that hungry, or uncomfortable in general, and somewhere his aunt and uncle had got the idea that shutting him in his cupboard without any food was a punishment – but they didn't like doing the chores themselves, so he was never shut in there long enough to actually become _hungry._

Besides, flying was cool, and he could do a lot of that.

* * *

As Harry had expected, the teacher only spent enough time to take the register before telling them that they could do whatever they wanted for the day.

For a lot of the other children, that meant flooding out into the grounds to play ball games or run around having fun or sit in the sun, but Harry didn't like doing that much. He was pretty good at it, but it felt unfair to play a ball game because nobody else had a tail, and he had his eye on something else anyway.

It was a book from a couple of years ago which had just arrived in the school library, and it had a dragon on it. So Harry took it out and started reading, resting his head on his hands while a wing turned the pages.

It started off talking about someone called 'Carrot', which was a strange name for a person to be called, who had grown up as part of a family of dwarves in the mountains but who had just found out he was actually something else. That sounded sort of familiar to Harry, and he wondered whether there was a big city of dragons somewhere, but before he could go very far down that line of thinking his cousin interrupted him.

"Hey, Harry," Dudley sniggered. "How come you're reading that book?"

"Why not?" Harry replied, putting a talon in the book to mark his place.

"'cause only Nobby No Mates read books when they could be outside having fun," one of Dudley's interchangeable friends contributed.

"There's someone in this book called Nobby," Harry replied, getting up and heading for the door. "He does have a friend, though."

Dudley tried to grab at the book, and Harry blocked his hand with a wing. He pushed the doors open, spread both wings, and took off with a single powerful flap before landing on the school roof.

Sighing, he turned over to get the full benefit of the summer sun on his wings and belly, and continued reading.

It was quite a funny book, really.

* * *

Harry was still thinking about the book as he flew home.

There had been at least two kinds of dragons in the book, perhaps three, but Harry was quite sure he wasn't like any of them. He certainly wasn't a swamp dragon, those were all smelly and full of chemicals and they kept exploding, and Harry hadn't exploded even once no matter what he ate.

The second kind of dragon was the noble dragon, and those sounded a bit more like it but Harry was quite sure he wasn't one of those either. They sounded quite nasty, but more importantly they were all very big, and Harry wasn't nearly big enough.

The third kind of dragon was the silliest of all, and Harry was fairly sure he wasn't one of those either. If he was, he'd have blown the house up and achieved orbit some time last Christmas when he ate all the leftover Brussels Sprouts.

Still, those were story book dragons, and he was a real dragon. It wouldn't be surprising if real dragons were a bit different – like how real people were different to people in storybooks. After all, writing about real things was boring.

* * *

When Harry arrived back home, Aunt Petunia barely gave him a glance before telling him to sort out the garden. So that was what Harry did, cutting the dead-heads off the flower bushes (and eating them) and trimming the hedge (by eating it).

It was one of his favourite chores, and he sometimes thought it was a bit of a pity that he didn't have that job in winter. The cold had never really bothered him, and nor had the heat, but plants grew more in the summer so there wasn't as much point doing the gardening in the winter.

That done, and with the whole garden looking pristine, Harry moved on to cleaning up the inside of the house. All the things that Dudley had dropped but somehow not broken went up into the smallest bedroom, which currently served as Dudley's overflow for his hoard – or, rather, his possessions, though Harry thought of it as a hoard and had consequently found himself feeling quite empathetic with his larger, less-reptilian cousin.

The things which had actually broken and which weren't repairable, Harry followed a scrupulous pattern with. He took them to his aunt, asked what he should do, and then – when she inevitably told him to throw them away – ate them.

Funny little electronic games were actually quite tasty, with all sorts of flavours, and even a wooden toy could be appetizing. It was probably a valuable supplement to his diet or something, though Harry had never seen a version of the Food Pyramid which applied to dragons so he wasn't quite sure.

Then it was time for dinner to be prepared, and Harry did a lot of that as well – fetching, carrying, stirring for long boring periods, chopping things up with the knife… it only made sense for him to do the chopping, because the knife was sharp and his skin was essentially impervious to damage with a stainless steel knife (Harry had tried an experiment when he was nine, to see if his talons could be trimmed) so he was less in danger than Aunt Petunia would be. He was also learning a lot about cooking, as well, which was nice – even if he didn't use it for himself, being able to eat pretty much anything he'd ever tried, it would be good to be able to provide food for more human friends in future.

That, then, was Harry's general routine. In the holidays there was less school and only the same amount of chores, which usually meant more flying practice; he was quite good at it now, and it was something he was sure other dragons practiced a lot as well so it would be good to stay in shape for it.

* * *

AN:

So, this is my new project.

The biggest things to point out here that aren't explicitly spelled out as such are:

Harry turned into a dragon at some point in primary school, and nobody noticed thanks to an unexpected outcome of some spells meant to stop Muggles from noticing dragons flying around.

He's closer to his canon weight in book one than to the canon weight of Dudley in book one and is emphatically not huge.

Also, it's 1991.


	2. A Peculiar Flood Of Letters

One fine day towards the end of July, the post clattered to the doormat.

"Get the post," Uncle Vernon grumbled.

Harry was already headed that way when his uncle asked, absently snacking on the empty milk carton, and swallowed it down with a gulp before picking up the letters.

There was one for Dudley – probably a late birthday card of some sort – and two or three others, but at the bottom of the pile was one with an address in green ink.

_Harry Potter_

_The Cupboard Under The Stairs_

_4, Privet Drive_

_Little Winging_

_Surrey._

Tilting his head, Harry looked for a long moment at the very first letter he'd ever received.

Then he headed back to the breakfast table, stuffing the letter under the door of his cupboard on the way past, and handed the other letters out to their recipients.

The green-inked letter was the first time he'd ever got something addressed to _him_, and he was going to savour it.

* * *

It was mid-morning by the time the young drake finally managed to retire to his lair and examine the green-inked letter.

Whatever it was written on seemed to be quite thick, and felt different to the more normal paper he was used to. It also smelled a bit more strongly than paper did, but maybe that was just the way it was made – so Harry ignored that, and opened the letter up to see what it said.

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore_

_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,_

_Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

At this point Harry frowned, wondering what most of those words meant. He'd heard of witchcraft and wizardry, or at least of witches and wizards, usually in the same books which had dragons in them. But this sounded like it wasn't a story-book thing but a real thing?

Except that Merlin was definitely a story person, and what was a Sorc? He didn't have a clue what a Mugwump was, either…

On the whole, so far the letter was very confusing. So Harry read on.

_Dear Mr. Potter,_

_We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

Well, it was certainly a letter that was meant for him, but he didn't remember doing any tests to be accepted into any schools with that sort of name. There had been the Eleven-Plus, which he'd done earlier that year, but Aunt Petunia had insisted that she wasn't going to pay to send him to a Grammar School after Dudley had failed and so had made sure he wasn't going to one of those.

Harry wasn't sure she understood how a Grammar School worked. But maybe this odd Hogwarts school had picked him because of that?

_Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. _

_Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July._

And that was just odd. The list was certainly there, folded up underneath the main letter, but what did the bit about an owl mean?

A quick look at the equipment list _did_ mention an owl, but that was a kind of pet and it was an option. Maybe they had an owl shortage? But if they did, Harry didn't think it would make any kind of sense for them to ask for owl donations from students.

Shrugging his wings, he skipped the signature and read through the list of required equipment.

The uniform seemed simple enough at first, robes and a pointed hat were a bit strange but he'd heard of sillier things in school uniforms, but the gloves made him stop and stare at the paper for a moment.

Dragon hide gloves?

Harry wondered if that meant this was actually a _dragon_ school. It made a lot more sense that they'd be sending _him_ a letter specifically because he was a dragon, but maybe it meant he'd done something wrong?

Last time he'd molted he'd been unsure what to do with it, and after some experimentation and plenty of mistakes the best he'd managed was to make a rain hat that covered his glasses. If he'd been supposed to save the bits that went over his paws, and he hadn't, maybe that would mean he'd be in trouble before even going there?

But that couldn't be right, could it? Molts happened because he needed to have a growth spurt, and all the old bits of molt skin were too small for him now. So maybe it was more complicated than that?

Muttering under his breath about this strange list of what he needed for school, Harry read down the list of course books – memorizing them and making a note of checking the local library later – and then the other equipment sounded even stranger.

Pewter? Well, pewter was sort of nice-tasting, if difficult to get hold of – the only place he'd managed to get any was some old toys Aunt Marge had given Dudley which Aunt Petunia had thrown out once Dudley had managed to break them all. But if this _was_ a real school, especially if it was a real dragon school, then how did they stop the students from eating the cauldrons?

Maybe it was like pencils and pens, where you weren't supposed to eat them until they were no longer useful?

And the last bit of the letter said that students could bring a pet – an owl, or a cat, or a toad.

Harry sat down, thinking about that.

Well, owls were apparently running out anyway, so it wasn't a good idea to catch one of those if there was a shortage. And cats might be a bit better, but that one lady's cats kept freaking out whenever they saw him.

Harry briefly wondered how long it was since he'd actually met her – it felt like years! - but shrugged that off, and pondered briefly whether he should try and find a toad in the garden before deciding against it.

Now he'd finished it, a lot of it didn't really make much sense. Maybe it was some of that junk mail that Uncle Vernon kept talking about, which was always a bit of an odd name for it to Harry because he was fairly sure it was Americans who called letters mail and British people said post. That was why they had postboxes.

* * *

The next day, another letter arrived for Harry addressed in the same green ink.

Just as he had the first day, he put it in his cupboard on the way past, and as soon as he got some free time he was lying on his back with his tail halfway up the wall as he compared them.

Much to his surprise – and disappointment – the second letter explained no more than the first. In fact, the second letter explained exactly as much as the first had, being identical in every way.

Harry shrugged, put it with the first, and went about his day.

* * *

On the third day, the post arrived when Aunt Petunia was closer to the door. She picked up the letters, gasped, and hurried to show them to Uncle Vernon.

The two adults exchanged worried looks out of all proportion to how important simple junk mail was, in Harry's opinion – then tried to hide them away from him when he craned his neck to look.

"Stop it!" Aunt Petunia ordered. "Vernon, make him stop it!"

"I just want to see if it's another one of those letters," Harry explained politely, as Uncle Vernon completely failed to push Harry away. "I've read two already, they're exactly the same and they seem quite silly."

"You've read one?" Uncle Vernon demanded. "How did you get your hands on one of those… those… freakish letters?"

"I got the post," Harry pointed out, quite reasonably as far as he was concerned. "It's a pity, really, it's the first time there's been a letter addressed to me and it's all total nonsense. Something about a school that's taking donations of owls and wants me to bring pewter along or something, but they didn't give an address _or_ a phone number."

He held out his paw. "If you want I'll put them down in my cupboard? That way they'll be out of the way, at least."

* * *

Harry had to demonstrate that he did indeed have two opened letters – and point out the things about them which just seemed ridiculous – but ultimately his case was made, and Aunt Petunia somewhat reluctantly surrendered the three letters that had arrived that day to his care.

That made a total of five, though about half of them were still in their envelopes, and Harry sighed a little as he looked at his new collection.

They were nice, and they were certainly _his_, but he did wish they made a bit more sense.

* * *

On the fourth day, there were ten letters on the doormat.

They all ended up in Harry's cupboard again, but Harry also spent half an hour helping Uncle Vernon hold up planks while his uncle hammered nails into the door. The planks blocked the letterbox off, which seemed a little bit extreme to the ten-year-old drake, but he had to admit that it was just getting annoying by now.

Surely it had to cost more to send all these letters than anyone could get back? And what did they think he was doing with the letters, exactly?

Harry's tail lashed back and forth as he contemplated exactly what the mysterious letter-sender could be thinking. Maybe they thought the letters were being used for firewood?

Then he nearly tripped his cousin up as Dudley ran up the stairs, and got sent to his cupboard again. Harry passed the time by opening another three envelopes and trying to see if he could do origami with them.

* * *

Despite Harry's vague mixture of anticipation and worry about the subject, no letters made their way through the letterbox on the fifth day.

The whole household had been up early enough for it, on tenterhooks to see if the plank plan would work, but by the time Harry began breakfast – an hour later than normal – they had all decided that Uncle Vernon's unorthodox plan had worked.

Humming a tune he'd overheard on the television through his cupboard door, Harry cracked the first egg into the frying pan.

A rolled-up letter came out, instead of a white and a yolk, and fell into the pan with a faint sizzle. Frowning, Harry fetched it out – not fearing the hot oil, because dragons didn't seem to have much truck with being uncomfortable because of being hot – and put it to the side before cracking the second egg.

A letter tumbled out of that one as well, and Harry looked properly at it this time. Sure enough, it was addressed in emerald green ink.

"Aunt Petunia?" he called.

"What is it?" his aunt asked, walking into the kitchen. "I told you, two eggs each for Dudders and Vernon, and..."

She paused, staring at the empty eggshells, the lack of eggs in the frying pan, and the rolled-up letters.

Harry took the opportunity to crack a third egg, from the box of twelve, and a letter came out of that one as well.

"Oh," Aunt Petunia said.

As she watched, Harry cracked egg after egg – going through the entire dozen – and got nothing but rolled-up letters.

"Should I do extra bacon and toast instead?" he asked.

"Yes, of course you should," she told him. "Vernon! Vernon, _they_ did something!"

Harry listened with half an ear to the conversation, most of the rest of his attention on salvaging the already late breakfast. To save time, he ate while he was making it – both the eggshells, and the letters, which tasted really quite good.

He'd actually intended to only have one, but it tasted a lot better than paper usually did, and Harry ate eight of them before catching himself so he would have a few to add to his as-yet-tiny hoard.

Maybe that was why they were able to keep students from nibbling on things like cauldrons or pets? If paper there tasted this much better than normal paper, then it would be the way _he'd_ make sure.

* * *

On day six, a few days before Harry's birthday, nothing happened on the letter front all morning.

There still weren't any eggs – Aunt Petunia had refused to get any more – and so breakfast was large slices of toast with bacon and sausages instead. After that Dudley had vanished upstairs to play on his specially imported games console from Japan, and Harry spent most of the morning tidying the living room.

Aunt Petunia had told him to do it without the vacuum cleaner to avoid disturbing Dudley, which was fair enough, and he was nearly finished scrubbing the carpets when a letter flew down the chimney.

And then another.

Harry stepped back a little warily, taking care not to knock over the soap bucket, and a flood of _hundreds_ of letters came cascading out the fireplace – propelled with great force, some of them floating in the air and others crashing into the sofas or armchairs and falling to the ground.

When the deluge finally stopped, Harry rolled his eyes and snorted something he'd heard one of the kids at school call him. Then he began picking up the letters, twenty at a time, and moving them into his cupboard.

He'd feel a lot better about these letters if they didn't keep making life harder for him.

* * *

Some hours later, as he bedded down on an inch-high layer of parchment, Harry was feeling a bit more mellow towards the strange letters that had tried to _literally_ flood into the house. Maybe it was the taste, or maybe it was how they _did_ improve the comfort of his sleeping arrangements, but Harry felt like lying on top of all these things that were _his_ was somehow… right.

Maybe this was what dragons actually hoarded? Harry knew that some dragons in the stories hoarded gold, though others didn't hoard anything at all, but the dragons in the stories were all a long time ago and gold wasn't used for money any more. It was all paper now, at least the valuable things were – some money was coins but they weren't worth as much.

And if dragons hoarded gold in the olden days even if it wasn't coins – and Harry definitely remembered there being shiny non-coin things in hoards in books – then maybe dragons these days hoarded paper even if it wasn't banknotes.

* * *

The next morning the chimney had been boarded up as well. Harry frowned at the sight, and asked Uncle Vernon whether maybe letters would come around the side of the door instead, and that prompted another half hour of hammering as Uncle Vernon boarded up all the sides of both the front door and the back door as well.

Fortunately Aunt Petunia had gone shopping the day before, so they had quite a lot of food in the fridge and in the cupboards, and for a wonder the day passed relatively normally – which meant that Harry's aunt and uncle relaxed a bit as no letters came through the pipes or out from under the wallpaper, and Dudley even asked Harry to come and play on the Super Nintendo with him.

Well, it was more like _demanded_, because Dudley wanted to play a two-player game, but Harry would take what he could get. At least it was one where you had to work _with_ the other player.

* * *

When he woke up on Tuesday, Harry's tail flicked a little from side to side as he wondered whether he'd get anything for his birthday the next day.

It was sometimes a bit of a matter of chance whether he did at all. In the past Harry had been quite upset about that, but he'd learned to think philosophically, and really when you thought about it a lot of the things Dudley got were things Harry didn't want to get anyway.

Lying on his papery hoard, he wondered whether maybe it would be nice to get some books. Books, or storybooks anyway, were something he enjoyed which he knew Dudley didn't like… and maybe that was because he was a dragon who hoarded paper, like he'd decided the previous day?

As he thought about that and other deep thoughts, there was an almighty crash from upstairs accompanied by a shriek from Aunt Petunia.

"Pet?" Uncle Vernon called, loud enough for everyone in the house to hear. "What happened?"

Another crash and a slithering noise came from overhead, the latter progressing quickly down the stairs, and Harry got up and out of his cupboard to behold a truly _massive_ pile of letters on the landing.

"The loft!" Aunt Petunia said, trying to put the words together. "I was going to go up into the loft and – absolutely _filled_ with letters! They fell out!"

Harry began carting the letters back to his cupboard in big pawsful, wondering how many he could fit in before he'd have to start eating them instead.

* * *

Late that night, as the clock crept towards midnight, Harry slept on his new bed.

Lounging atop a pile of possessions, even such strange possessions in such an unusual situation, had made him feel terribly _right_. Perhaps it was just that he was doing something that dragons traditionally did, but then again he'd never felt the need to use his fire breath – it was awfully dangerous, and while he _could_ do it… it just felt like a tool, something he could do. While his new bed felt entirely different.

Consequently, his slumber was deep and even – his tail curled around under his wing, half-rolled over onto his side, his neck and all his other body parts bent a trifle awkwardly to fit, but he was long used to that by now and it hadn't even made it hard for him to drop off to sleep.

In the sitting room, the clock ticked, and then all three hands lined up – midnight.

And there was a thunderous knock at the door.

Harry shifted slightly, tucking his head under his wing, and continued dreaming a dream about his old Primary schoolteacher running a charity book sale to raise funds for replacement owls.

* * *

AN:

If you don't know magic is a thing, the Hogwarts letter looks like it makes absolutely no sense. Even if you think magic is a thing, a lot of the specifics are still quite odd.

And if you're a dragon who can eat pewter? It looks like a dinner order.

Dragon-Harry design notes:

Black scales, a few less-black markings including the dark-brown lightning bolt scar on his forehead. Eyes are mostly unchanged, though slightly slit.

No need for glasses but wears them anyway because he's used to it. They rest on his ears, which don't look a lot like ears and which he normally holds still anyway to support the glasses; surprise him enough and they'll poing right off as his ears go up.

Stands a little under five feet tall if on his hind legs with his neck slightly curved, but usually walks on all fours with his tail held up to avoid tripping anyone.

Wingspan about 7 feet when fully spread, wings are quite 'deep'. Any Muggle aerodynamicist would say he couldn't fly with those wings anyway, but that he might be able to glide; Harry can fly himself quite casually, though he can only carry so much weight.

Wings _can_ hold things, but it's fiddly and it's large things only. Forepaws however are fully prehensile and dextrous, and he can write quite well for an eleven-year-old.

Tail has no fins or spade on it and tapers to a point.

No separate fins, just the main wing pair. Wings are supported by alar phalanges with the outer ones longer, and insert about at the point level with his hind legs (essentially the 3.5 red dragon from the Draconomicon).


	3. Harry's Giant Introduction To Wizards

The loud knocking gradually penetrated into Harry's dreaming thoughts, and then there was a crash which most mornings would have had him jolting awake.

He had only had a couple of hours of sleep, though, and so he slowly mumbled his way toward wakefulness – the paper he was lying on rustling below him as he shifted.

"…how dare you! Breaking into our house in the middle of the night!"

"Shut up, Dursley, you daft old prune..."

"...what will the neighbours think?"

Still sort of muzzy, Harry yawned quietly.

"...'Arry Potter?"

"No, I'm Dudley Dursley..."

Fumbling around, Harry found the door to his cupboard and opened it. The piles of letters had been destabilized a bit by his movement, and he slid out into the hallway.

"What time is it?" he asked, yawning, then looked at the wall clock. "Five past midnight? Mf, it's too early..."

He turned to look at the cause of the noise, and saw a really quite amazingly tall man hunched in the entryway.

"Is something the matter?" he asked, fetching his glasses with his tail and putting them on his muzzle.

"...Merlin's beard," the very tall man said, his jaw slowly dropping. Harry tilted his head in confusion, and the man pointed at him.

"You're a dragon?" he asked.

"Yes?" Harry replied. "You're the first person to mention that, actually."

"Dragon?" Uncle Vernon said. "What's this about dragon? Is this more freak nonsense?"

"Freak!?" the big man roared. "He's not a freak, he's a cute little talking dragon – just look at 'im! Never seen a talking dragon before, but 'e looks..."

The big man paused, a smile spreading across his big bearded face.

"'e doesn't look like any of the dragons I know," the man added, as Harry padded a little closer and kicked a letter out of the way. "But it all looks beautiful, them wings and everything."

Then he finally seemed to lose whatever internal conflict had been going on, and swept the startled Harry up in a bear-hug.

After the initial shock, Harry was surprised to find he actually quite enjoyed the experience.

Twenty or so minutes later, the Dursleys had more-or-less given up shouting at the giant man – who Harry had learned was named Hagrid, and who had waved a big pink umbrella about to put the door back where it had started. Neither Aunt Petunia nor Uncle Vernon were really _happy_ about the whole situation, but it seemed to Harry that they couldn't just stand there shouting at Hagrid for all that long in the middle of the night.

When he'd pointed this entirely sensible point out, the two adults had shouted a bit more, but then gone back upstairs with bad grace and locked their bedroom door.

"Still can't believe I found a talking dragon," Hagrid said, shaking his head as he examined Harry's wing shoulder. "And to find one in a Muggle house, too..."

"What's a Muggle?" Harry asked, curious, lowering his wing once Hagrid had finished looking at the joints. "Is that what Aunt Petunia was called before she got married?"

"What's that?" Hagrid asked. "No, no, she was an Evans. Must have been. Like Lily."

He paused, then frowned. "Oh, shouldn't have forgotten that. Came here with a job. Don't suppose you know which bedroom's called the cupboard under the stairs, do you?"

"That's my bedroom," Harry answered. "It's not very big but it feels nice and lair-y. Why's that?"

"Well, I'm after Harry Potter, that's why," Hagrid explained. "It's his birthday, an' I was told by Professor Dumbledore to deliver his Hogwarts letter."

"Oh, are you where all those letters came from?" Harry asked, picking up one of the ones which had spilled out of the cupboard. "I was wondering, but I'm afraid a lot of it didn't make sense."

Hagrid paused, looking from Harry to the door he'd come out of, then his gaze went to Harry's forehead.

Harry wasn't sure why. It was one of the places his otherwise-black scales had a little marking on them, a small thunderbolt-like shape… but was that unusual for a dragon or not?

Maybe it was.

"It can't be," Hagrid said slowly. "_You're_ Harry Potter?"

"Yes?" Harry replied. "Is there a reason I shouldn't be?"

He twisted his head to look back at himself, in case he'd changed colour while he wasn't looking, and Hagrid put a hand on the curve of Harry's neck.

"You might not remember me, 'Arry," he began. "But I helped Professor Dumbledore bring you here nearly ten years ago, so you'd be safe. But you weren't no dragon then."

"I know," Harry replied matter-of-factly. "I was very confused when I changed into one, but that was a long time ago and I sort of assumed it was normal when nobody made any comment on it."

"They haven't?" Hagrid asked, now confused. "But… ah, that might be it. There's all sorts of magic what stops Muggles from seeing things they ain't supposed to see, and I remember my old Creatures professor telling me as how dragons is one of them things."

Harry digested that, then opened the letter he'd picked up earlier.

"So this _isn't_ a letter for a dragon school?" he asked. "Why on earth would we need pewter cauldrons, then?"

This seemed to have stumped the big man.

"Cauldrons?" he repeated. "Well… for potions, o' course. What else?"

"I thought snacks," Harry suggested. "Perhaps as a way to prevent the owl shortage."

Hagrid looked confused by that, then shook his head. "No, Hogwarts ain't a dragon school, Harry… it's a school for wizards, like you."

"I'm a wizard?" Harry repeated. "I thought I was a dragon."

"Well, yer a dragon too, o' course," Hagrid said. "But yer a wizard, or you wouldn't be accepted. Like how I was."

He patted the drake on the back. "Yer mum and dad were a witch and a wizard too. Though neither of 'em ever turned into a dragon…"

"They were?" Harry asked, interested, and not surprised by the bit about neither of his parents turning into a dragon. "Well, my uncle and aunt told me they died in a car crash-"

"A CAR CRASH!?" Hagrid bellowed.

"-but if magic is meant to be secret then I can see why they said that," Harry went on, thinking hard, and absently scraping some letters over with his wing as he did so.

That announcement took the wind out of Hagrid's sails, and he mumbled something about that making sense actually.

"Could you tell me about them?" Harry went on, then yawned. "I, ummm… sorry, it's still very late…"

"'course I'll tell you about James and Lily," Hagrid promised. "Could do it over cake, too, I picked one up for your birthday. 'course, I didn't know you were a dragon then..."

Harry's tail flicked from side to side a little, but then he yawned again.

Thinking about it, he decided that his aunt and uncle probably wouldn't mind if he slept on the sofa so long as he kept his claws out of the seats. So, with Hagrid's bemused and interested help, he put some of the letters on the sofa and bedded down to resume his interrupted slumber.

* * *

The second time Harry woke up, it was to a much gentler knocking – the sound of a claw rapping smoothly on the window.

Yawning, he turned over, and thumped unceremoniously to the floor.

"Huh? Wossat?" Hagrid asked, jumping awake from where he'd been lying across most of the length of the room. "You all right, lad?"

Harry nodded, looking around for where he'd left his glasses last night, and spotted them over on the table.

Rolling upright and retrieving them, he inspected the window where the noise was coming from. An owl was perched outside, knocking regularly on the window for attention, and Harry glanced at Hagrid.

"Well, go on then," Hagrid invited him. "Let 'im in, he's probably got the paper."

Harry opened the window, wondering what Hagrid meant, and watched with some surprise as the owl flew neatly in before putting down a small newspaper in front of Hagrid.

The big man rummaged around in his coat, producing all kinds of strange things like a birthday cake and a family of mice. One of the latter nearly got away, but Harry pounced on it before it got under the sofa and returned it to Hagrid.

Finally a small bag came out, and Hagrid counted out some odd-looking coins into a pouch attached to the owl's leg. This seemed to satisfy it, and it flew back out of the window as Hagrid returned most of the things to his pockets.

"Those pictures are moving," Harry noticed. "Is that magic?"

"'course it's magic," Hagrid chuckled. "It's the Daily Prophet, it's always like that."

He read it, and Harry used a chair as support to look over his shoulder. Half the stories were about things which he didn't really get the context of, like a recent election of a Minister for Magic or a story about a badly made pewter cauldron melting, and besides he was distracted by something else.

"Was that owl making a delivery?" he asked. "That's very clever."

"Hm?" Hagrid replied, then remembered who he was talking to. "Oh, that's right. Owl post, best way to send letters if you ask me. A good post owl will find who you sent the letter to no matter what."

"So _that's_ what it meant about awaiting my owl," Harry said, pleased to have the answer. "But does that mean I'll have to send one today?"

"Don't worry, 'Arry, I'll tell Professor Dumbledore personally," Hagrid assured him. He checked the time, then put the paper down and reached for the birthday cake he'd put aside earlier.

"Don't suppose you've got any plates?" he asked. "May as well have a sweet breakfast an' all, it _is_ your birthday."

Harry went to fetch two plates, two forks and a spoon, not knowing whether Hagrid would prefer one option or the other, then went back to get a knife after realizing that they would need to cut the cake.

* * *

There was no sign of the Dursleys while they had their meal, and Harry wondered if they were just waiting until they were absolutely certain the big man had left. It was still quite early, but they had to be awake by now – especially after Hagrid had sung Happy Birthday loud enough to rattle the windows – and normally a Harry birthday wasn't much different from any other day in the Dursley household.

"So, what did yeh think?" Hagrid asked, suddenly sounding quite nervous. "Wasn't sure what kind'a cake you'd like."

"Oh, it was very tasty," Harry assured him, licking his muzzle to get the last of the icing off. "I've never got to eat the candles before."

"Well, them candles aren't exactly what most people eat, but – well, who knows with dragons, eh?" Hagrid asked, giving Harry a scratch behind the ear and chuckling at the little dragon's happy reaction. "Still, best be getting into London, got to get yer school things."

"I've only been to London a few times," Harry told him. "I flew there because there's a really good library, but it takes all day and I usually have chores."

"Well, I don't rightly think flying's the answer," Hagrid mused, scooping up most of the things he'd left lying around. "I've got a big flying motorcycle, but Professor Dumbledore told me it weren't a good idea to fly it around in daytime and I think he's right… still, Dumbledore gave me some Muggle money for the train."

"Can wizards fly around?" Harry asked. "I know dragons can, obviously…"

"Well, there's plenty of ways of flyin' for a wizard," Hagrid answered. "There's me motorcycle, or there's brooms, or flyin' carpets… oh, and there's all sorts of animals too, like a thestral or a hippogriff – beautiful creatures, beautiful. But most of 'em are a bit big to fly around in a city and such."

"I think I understand," Harry nodded, to show he was keeping up. "So I'm okay to fly around because people without magic can't tell I'm a dragon, but that's not what happens for something like a hippogriff?"

Hagrid gave him a thumbs-up. "Good lad. Now, er… where's the train station?"

"I think I know where the nearest one is," Harry replied. "Should we tell Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon that we're leaving?"

"Prob'ly best," Hagrid agreed. "Oh, that reminds me, I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention that bit with the door. I'm not really supposed to do magic, but I'm allowed to do a bit when getting your Hogwarts letter to you… not sure if the door counts..."

* * *

Harry found it quite funny how much trouble Hagrid had with the money. He didn't laugh, because the big man was so earnest, but it did make him wonder how money worked for magical people – the only magic money he'd seen so far was the little bronze coins, and they didn't look _that_ different from pennies in how they worked.

There was easily enough to get the two of them a train ride from Little Whingeing to Waterloo Station, and from there they made their way across the river to Charing Cross road.

"So, where are we going, Hagrid?" Harry asked, trotting alongside with little half-flaps of his wings for speed – as he'd learned already, Hagrid could move fast when he wanted to.

One of his wingtips nearly knocked someone's hat off, and he winced before furling them. "I didn't know there were any of that kind of shop in London, but I haven't really checked. Are they in the Yellow Pages?"

"The what?" Hagrid said. "Nah, it's the Leaky Cauldron we want. It's special – Muggles go right past it without seein' it. Kind of like you, actually."

Harry nodded, seeing the parallel. "So… that means that anyone in it is going to be a wizard or a witch? Or someone else magic?"

"Thas' right," Hagrid agreed.

"That's going to be strange," Harry observed. "Or… different? I've only just found out most people can't tell I'm a dragon and now I'm going to be in a room full of people who can."

"Don't worry, lad," the big wizard (?) told him. "The barkeep, Tom, he knows me. You'll be fine – ah! Here we are."

Hagrid turned off the street, into an old-looking pub, and Harry followed along a step or two behind.

It took his eyes only a moment to adjust to the lower light, and almost straight away there was a shout of surprise – then a shriek, and someone knocked a table over and spilled what were probably alcoholic drinks across the floor.

Within a few seconds all the strange characters in the Leaky Cauldron were hiding away from Harry and Hagrid, and then the man behind the bar gestured at Hagrid with a beer mug.

"Rubeus!" he called. "How many times do I have to tell you about bringing in your little beasties!"

"But-" Hagrid began, and the man – presumably Tom – kept talking.

"But nothing! Last time it was a manticore! And the time before was that griffin, wasn't it?"

"Hey, now, she wouldn't hurt a-"

"That griffin terrorized half the customers!" Tom declared. "It took me weeks to get rid of all the feathers – and we're still finding manticore spines in the corners of the room after that one panicked!"

Harry tilted his head, wondering if that was going to be the last word, but Tom just kept right on going. "Rubeus, I know you're not a malicious man – no, I _do_, I've known you long enough for that. But everyone knows your heart's bigger than your head, and you always believe the best of even the most dangerous creature. And maybe you can manage them, but this… why do you have a _dragon_ here?"

"Orders from Dumbledore," Hagrid managed to say in the first gap more than a second long.

"Oh, Dumbledore!" Tom replied, sounding a bit mollified. "Well, I suppose he knows better… all right, but if this dragon of yours causes any trouble then it's you who's paying for it! _And_ your tab!"

* * *

"Sorry about that, Harry," Hagrid said, once they were in the little alley at the back of the Leaky Cauldron. "I should'a thought how it'd look when I brought you in… I hope yeh don't feel upset about it."

"Did you bring a griffin through to get their Hogwarts stuff as well?" Harry asked, wanting to make sure this was cleared up. "Or a manticore?"

"No – no, Harry, that weren't about Hogwarts stuff then," Hagrid answered him. "Most all the students who've been to Hogwarts 'ave been human, or mostly human… that's why they don't think of it, I reckon."

He thought about it, then rummaged in his coat and pulled out a yellow tea cosy. "Was knitting this last night," the giant man explained. "Maybe it'd make you look less scary, give them summat to think about?"

Harry accepted the tea cosy, and put it on his head. He'd never really worn anything like it before, not having had a woolly hat back when he was still human, but it didn't feel too bad.

"So… where do we go from here?" Harry asked. "Do we just go over the wall? Or is it magic?"

"Oh, it's magic all right," Hagrid replied, getting out his umbrella and tapping on the bricks. "Three up… and two across..."

As he finished, the bricks all moved aside – sliding away and reforming into an arch, through which Harry could see a street full of all sorts of strange shops.

There was one which sold nothing but owls, another which described itself as a joke shop, and right down the far end of the street there was a big marble building which looked very important. There weren't all that many people in the street yet, but there were a few – a family out shopping, a woman hurrying down the street towards the Leaky Cauldron, and a man wearing a very strange-looking robe festooned with pictures of chess pieces.

"Diagon Alley," Hagrid announced. "Come on, first thing we got to do is to get to Gringotts – that's the bank. Run by goblins."

He set off, and Harry hurried to keep up – using his wings to help out again, taking advantage of the much less crowded streets.

Nobody screamed this time, or shrieked, though the woman who'd been walking quickly down the street saw them and stopped in her tracks.

"Good morning," Harry said, waving at her as they went past, though the only response he got was a wordless stare.

Well, maybe she was tired. It was still quite early in the morning, after all.

* * *

When they arrived at Gringotts bank itself, Hagrid's confidence was a far cry from his trouble with the paper money and the ticket office out in the Muggle world. He strode straight up to one of the open counters, and announced that he was there both to make a withdrawal from Mr. Potter's vault and to pick up a 'you know what' from another vault.

Interested to see what was going on, Harry reached up to the counter with a paw and pulled himself into an upright position. The goblin on the other side of the desk seemed quite surprised to see him, and gave Hagrid a quelling glance, but Harry's pleasant greeting and cheerful wave with his free paw seemed to help lighten the situation.

Once Hagrid had finally managed to dig a key out of his pockets – which seemed full of even more outrageous things than he'd produced in Privet Drive – the goblin teller summoned another, by the name of Shardmouth, to take them down to the vaults.

That was when Harry was introduced to the carts of Gringotts.

"These are pretty fun!" he said, one paw on the tea-cosy Hagrid had given him and the other on his glasses to make sure neither would blow away in the racing wind around the rattling cart. "What do you think, Hagrid?"

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Hagrid replied. "Can't this thing slow down?"

"Not on this route," Shardmouth answered.

Harry turned from wondering what would happen if he opened his wings to full extension, and whether _that_ would slow the cart down. "I know that we're told to look out of a vehicle if we feel carsick."

"Don't think that'd help," Hagrid mumbled.

He was about to say something else, but Harry saw a burst of flame off to the side.

"That was a dragon!" he said, as they passed over a big underground lake. "A really big one, too – do they keep their money down here as well?"

"I can assure you that the only bank used by dragons is Gringotts," Shardmouth told him, with a sly little smile.

Harry absorbed that as they dropped deeper into the caverns, until their cart finally came to a halt by a small door.

Hagrid got out and took several long, deep breaths, while Shardmouth turned the small golden key in the door and opened it.

The door swung open, letting out a cloud of green smoke that made Harry cough, and when it cleared he saw the inside of his vault.

It was… full of money.

More than that, it was full of _gold and silver_ as well as the little bronze coins which Harry had already seen – mounds of it, piled more than a foot high.

"All yours," Hagrid said, as Harry stared. His ears perked up, sending his glasses clattering to the floor.

Then the black dragon bounded forwards, taking two long loping steps before diving into the mass of metal with a _crash_ which sent precious metals everywhere.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Shardmouth and seven other goblins finally managed to extract Harry from his vault.

* * *

"You all right, lad?" Hagrid asked, returning Harry's glasses. "Bit of a funny turn, there?"

"Sorry," Harry said, ruffling his wings and looking down at his feet. "I… well, I suppose it's the first time I've really had anything I could think of as _mine_, let alone a proper _hoard_..."

"Don' worry," Hagrid assured him. "Want me to get the money for your school things?"

Harry thought about that question, firstly seeing if it made him come over all possessive again and then about what he actually wanted.

"...I think I'd better help you," he said. "To make sure I don't do that again, and because I'd like to get a bit extra – do they turn gold into pounds here?"

"We offer that service, yes," Shardmouth provided, as the other goblins watched on attentively.

Harry nodded. "Okay, that's good… it's because I'd like to take some books to school to read. Unless the school has a library with stories in it?"

"Hogwarts has got a great library," Hagrid replied. "But I don't remember any Muggle books in there. 'course, it's been a while since I visited..."

"Well, I think I'll get some anyway," Harry decided. "It'd be nice to have some I can read at home, instead of having to go to the library to read."

* * *

Harry more-or-less had to guess how much money it would take to buy the books he wanted, and when they got back up to the surface – after another trip even deeper into the earth to get the thing Hagrid had been sent for – it turned out to be about a hundred pounds.

He wasn't quite sure how much it would cost to get the books he was thinking of, but a hundred pounds sounded like enough for quite a lot of them. It wasn't as much as Dudley's presents had cost that year, of course, but that wasn't really much of a concern for Harry.

"Right, that's that done," Hagrid said, as they walked out into the sunlight. "Best to do your books and wand last, you ask me… I'd say the robes might take a while. You come with me, Madam Malkin's who we need to see."

"Does she know how to do robes for dragons?" Harry asked, then looked around with surprise at the sound of crashing glass. Someone coming out of the potions shop had dropped a bubble-shaped glass beaker about when Harry had asked the question, and Harry looked for a moment longer before shrugging his wings and turning back to Hagrid.

"Tell the truth I'm not all that sure, really," Hagrid admitted. "But I'm sure we'll think of something, lad."

"Oh, what would happen if I flew up there?" Harry added, a new question distracting him. "Is this part of London – if it is, could I come back in again by flying down again? Or is it that you can only get in through the Leaky Cauldron?"

Hagrid looked up at the sky, then down at Harry – whose wings were twitching a little as he thought about flying.

"Don't know that either, Harry," the big man said. "But best you find out later, I'd say. Don't want you to get lost or anything."

Harry nodded, seeing the wisdom there.

* * *

When the giant pushed the door open to let Harry through, a short witch smiled – then actually caught sight of him, and the smile turned slightly fixed.

"This here's Harry," Hagrid said, introducing the drake. "He's for Hogwarts. Listen, Harry, do you mind if I go and get something to steady me nerves in the Cauldron?"

"That's fine," Harry replied, remembering how Uncle Vernon sometimes needed a bit of a drink of brandy to calm him down. Harry had always wondered what it tasted like, given how it smelled, but that was something he knew he'd have to wait for until he was old enough.

Hearing him speak seemed to comfort the witch slightly, and she crouched down a little to reach Harry's level. "It's nice to meet you, dear – I'm Madam Malkin."

"Harry Potter," Harry replied, as Hagrid left, and Madam Malkin blinked in surprise.

"Goodness," she said, after a moment's thought. "Well, dear, I'm afraid we don't have any standard style robes for you, but I'll get my assistants and see what can be done. If you'll just come through into the fitting room..."

Harry followed her into the back of the shop, where there was a boy standing on a footstool with his back to the door while a second witch fiddled with the robes he was wearing.

"How are you getting on?" Madam Malkin asked the boy, and got a sort of nervous shrug in reply. "We've got a custom job to do, but I'm sure Ermintrude should be able to keep working on you while that's going on. If you'll just pop yourself up – oh, that's going to be a problem, isn't it..."

"Is that you, Draco?" the boy asked, sounding worried.

"Well, sort of," Harry replied. "But my name's Harry Potter."

The boy turned suddenly to look, heedless of the pin-work Ermintrude was doing up until that moment, and got a glimpse of Harry for only a moment before slipping and nearly falling off the stool. The stool actually clattered to the ground, but Madam Malkin had pulled a wand from somewhere and was floating him in mid-air so he didn't actually land.

"Careful now, dear," she advised, as Ermintrude put the stool back and two more witches came in. "You don't want to take a tumble, do you?"

As she spoke, Harry inspected the other footstool to see if he could think of a way to stand on it, then dismissed the idea in favour of something else.

Pushing it to the side, he reared up on his hind legs and let himself almost overbalance – coiling the lower half of his tail into a circle, and resting on that as well as his hind legs as a sort of tripod.

"Does this work?" he asked.

"Oh, good idea," Madam Malkin told him. "You two should just talk amongst yourselves while we work on this, don't worry."

There was a slightly awkward silence, which Harry decided to break. "Who's Draco?"

"Draco Malfoy," the boy clarified. "He's one of the other Pureblood boys this year. He makes me nervous, but – oh, um, I'm Neville Longbottom."

"Harry Potter," Harry replied, then realized he'd already said that. "It's nice to meet you. What does Pureblood mean?"

"It means a wizard or a witch who's got wizard and witch parents and grandparents," Neville explained, sounding confused. "How do you not know that? You're Harry Potter!"

"Well, I didn't actually know I was a wizard until this morning," Harry explained. "I got some letters several days ago, but it wasn't until Hagrid told me about it that I knew."

"But you're famous," Neville protested. "You're the Boy who Lived… though I didn't know you were a dragon."

Harry shifted a little to let the witches measure where his wings were attached. "What does boy who lived mean?"

"Oh, uh..." Neville began, trying to think of how to say it. "There was a really bad wizard, called, um… it d-doesn't matter. And..."

* * *

The whole story, with several questions by Harry, took about fifteen minutes for Neville to tell. In that space of time Harry learned that an evil wizard had terrorized the country; that he and his followers thought that pure-blood meant they were _better_ than other wizards; that nobody had been able to stop him; and that, nearly ten years ago, the evil wizard's reign of terror had been abruptly ended when he tried to kill Harry – and vanished.

Harry also found out where his odd lightning-bolt-shaped marking had come from (and he had to admit it made a little bit more sense than the idea it had been from a car crash) and that he and Neville were only one day apart in age.

"Gran said that we shouldn't go out shopping on my birthday, and of course we only got my Hogwarts letter a few days ago," Neville was explaining. "So, um… that's why we're doing it so late, because everything else was about the party."

Harry's tail flicked idly, then he felt a faint jab.

"Oops, sorry," one of the witches said. "Are you all right?"

"I think so?" Harry replied. "I've never hurt myself with a needle or anything before."

Madam Malkin inspected the needle, which was in fact bent at the tip by its encounter with Harry's scales, then waved her wand and fixed it. "Nearly done, dear..."

"My aunt and uncle don't much like throwing parties for me," Harry told Neville. "I don't really mind, but my cousin gets loads of presents and he just throws tantrums and breaks them."

Neville winced. "Wow… it's kind of funny to think about _Harry Potter_ having an, er..."

He flushed. "I was going to say a normal life, but you're a dragon..."

"There you go, dear," Madam Malkin said. "I'm very sorry for the wait."

Harry dropped back onto all fours, and was quite impressed. The material of the robes moved to let him go on all fours without a problem, it let his tail out, and when he experimentally unfurled a wing there was even a slot for that.

"We do robes for Quidditch, and we used the same ideas here," Madam Malkin explained, as Harry walked around in a circle to try them out – keeping his tail clear of Neville's footstool, to save his new friend a second tumble. "I trust you find them satisfactory?"

"Well, I think they're all right so far," Harry replied, spreading both wings this time and bringing them down slowly to check the travel. "What do you think, Neville?"

After a pause, surprised that Harry was asking his opinion, Neville started. "Oh – I think they're all right..."

"That sounds good, then," Harry decided. "How much are they?"

"If you'll just give us a minute, we'll make up the other two sets with the same pattern," Madam Malkin requested, twirling her wand to do just that. "And there's the hat, and – well, a few quick modifications to the winter cloak-"

"Oh, you don't need to bother," Harry tried to say. "I don't know if I'll ever use it, I never really feel cold."

"Perhaps that's so, dear, but I take pride on providing robes for _all_ occasions," Madam Malkin told him. "And there you go!"

* * *

Hagrid had been waiting outside for some minutes by the time Harry left, and was duly impressed by the new robes – especially when Harry demonstrated that he could fly even while wearing them, rising to about the level of the second floor and hovering there for a long moment before dropping back down two stories to ground level.

That done, their next stop was a general supply shop with all sorts, and Harry managed to restrain himself from sampling half the potions ingredients on hand while they picked up the cauldron, phials and scales, plus a collapsible brass telescope. Hagrid also asked what kinds of protective gloves were available, which prompted Harry to pull himself up to the counter-top and ask where they got their dragon hide, and the resultant conversation left Harry faintly disturbed but satisfied that _almost all_ dragons didn't speak.

He was still grateful that they had managed to get a pair of Manticore skin gloves instead, though – while Hagrid was fairly sure that Harry's scales would be as resistant to potions as conventional dragon hide, finding out that this was incorrect would be quite inconvenient.

* * *

"Three things left on the list," Hagrid said, as they left that shop. "Books and wand, plus me present for you. Thought I'd get you an owl, dead useful."

"You've already given me a big birthday present just by introducing me to all this," Harry protested, but Hagrid waved him off.

"Nah, call it last years' then or something. Besides, an owl'll carry your post and everything, and I'm sure them Dursleys don't have one of them," Hagrid insisted. "How'd you keep in touch with any friends without one?"

The streets were growing a little more crowded, and the sight of Harry drew more and more stares, but Hagrid just forged ahead – leading Harry to Eeylops' Owl Emporium.

It was a dark place, and probably normally a silent one, but as soon as Harry entered the whole shop was full of hoots and barks and flapping wings as just about every bird in the place startled or began trying like mad to escape.

"Excuse me?" the man behind the counter asked loudly, sounding distressed. "This is – goodness!"

"Sorry 'bout this," Hagrid said, spreading his hands and trying to make soothing motions. "It ain't their fault, it ain't 'is fault, he can't help how he is..."

As they talked, both raising their voices to be heard over the din, Harry looked around with a sigh.

Maybe he'd just have to do without a pet, if this was how owls _and_ cats reacted to him. He didn't know he got on so badly with animals, but then again a lot of the animals he'd met before hadn't had a problem – it was just those cats the lady who lived not-too-far away from Number Four Privet Drive.

As he was pondering this, there was a quiet _preck_ from nearby.

Harry turned, and saw the noise had come from one of the owls. Unlike the rest, this one – a beautiful snowy owl – wasn't freaking out at the sight and smell of a dragon, but was just looking out from under its wing with an affronted expression.

"Sorry about the noise," Harry said, and the owl clicked its beak. "I didn't know they were all going to get so loud."

The snowy owl tilted its head and blinked sarcastically, before putting its head under its wing and going back to sleep.

* * *

Ten minutes later they left with the snowy owl, who turned out to be a female. Harry hadn't thought of a name for her yet – a male would have been easy and would have ended up as 'Ruth' – but he was sure he'd find something somewhere.

"Books next?" he asked Hagrid.

"Nah, I think yeh might take a while in there," Hagrid replied with a chuckle. "No, best thing is to get yer wand next. Then you can spend a while on the books, mebbe after lunch, an' we can get you on the train back to them Dursleys."

So saying, he led Harry to a particularly old-looking shop, one with a peeling sign over the top that said it had been established in 382 BC. This sounded very strange to Harry, who was fairly sure that London wasn't that old, but he supposed that perhaps the shop had moved here later after being established somewhere else.

When they entered, it was to find a tiny room with a single chair and rows and rows of small boxes lining every wall all the way up the ceiling.

"There must be thousands of these," Harry said, looking around. "How many wizards get wands here?"

"All of them," said a soft voice.

Harry's ears twitched, nearly unseating his glasses again, and he held his wings to his side as he turned around.

The old man who had spoken examined Harry carefully, looking him up and down, then spoke again. "Harry Potter."

"That's me," Harry confirmed, then frowned – tilting his head on one side. "How did you know? Most people just stare."

"I thought I'd be seeing you soon, Mr. Potter," the old man said – Harry assumed he was Mr. Ollivander, after the name of the shop. "And I never forget a wand, you see. Your body is different to what I was expecting, but your eyes… they are very similar to your mother's eyes."

"Really?" Harry asked. "I've never seen a picture, and mine are slightly slit now but they didn't used to be."

"It is the shade, Mr. Potter," Ollivander told him. "Unforgettable. And once you realize, the scar… well, it just confirms what I already knew."

He stepped back a pace. "But to provide a wand for a dragon, now… quite a different experience. Your mother's was ten and a quarter inches, swishy, made of willow. Good for charms. While your father – mahogany, eleven inches, more powerful and pliable as well. That one was a wand for transfiguration."

"What does that mean for my wand?" Harry asked. "Is it like the average?"

"Not at all, Mr. Potter," Ollivander corrected. "Not at all. The wand chooses, and wands are quite individual – each with a core of a powerful magical substance. And there is a third wand which has shaped your life," he added, touching the scar on Harry's forehead. "Thirteen and a half inch yew, and very powerful."

Harry's wings were starting to unfurl despite himself, and he furled them again with a faint clatter of wing membrane. "So… do I have to try all the wands until I find one which fits? Or does one just jump into my paw?"

"Not quite, Mr. Potter, not quite," Ollivander answered. "We shall see what we can do to find you a wand, most certainly..."

* * *

As it transpired, the process of selecting a wand had two main phases.

The first phase was that Mr. Ollivander began taking measurements. Length of dominant foreleg, length of non-dominant foreleg, distance between pupils, head diameter, height of shoulders, separation between shoulder girdle and hip girdle… the tape measure took over by itself after the first dozen or so, and after a little obvious hesitation also measured Harry's main wing spar, alar phalanges and tail length.

"How do these measurements help?" Harry asked.

"Bone structure, very important," the wand maker told him, taking boxes down from the high stacks of them all around the room. "Yes, very important..."

Mr. Ollivander waved his hand, and the tape measure clattered to the floor. He then unboxed a wand and handed it to Harry. "Try this one, ebony and phoenix feather, seven inches."

Harry took it, and Ollivander immediately took the wand back. "No, perhaps not… maybe this one, beechwood and unicorn hair..."

That more-or-less set the tone for the second phase of selecting a wand, which was that Mr. Ollivander handed Harry wand after wand to try and then took them back less than a second later.

The whole thing was quite mystifying to Harry, who looked around at Hagrid as he was passed yet another wand. "Is this normal, Hagrid?"

"Eh?" Hagrid replied. "Well, of course it's normal. Got to keep going until you get a wand with a good reaction."

"But there seem to be a lot of them," Harry replied, waving at the big pile building up on the chair.

"Don't worry, Mr. Potter, we have many wands left to try," Ollivander said, retrieving another wand from the set. "Try this one."

Harry immediately felt the difference when he took it, a tingle running up his arm and through his wings. This time he was able to give it a wave, and a shower of orange sparks bounced through the room all at once before slowly fading away.

"Ah, excellent!" the wandmaker said, as Hagrid applauded. "You see, Mr. Potter, there is always a wand for the wizard!"

He began packaging up the wands which hadn't worked, one at a time, then paused. "Though… it is surprising that it is that wand which reacted to you, Mr. Potter. You see, wands are known as brothers when their core comes from the same animal, and that wand's core is a phoenix feather… and the only brother to that wand, why, it gave you that scar."

"You mean it was a wand that belonged to that dark wizard?" Harry asked, moving his wand to between his thumb and foreclaw and touching the scar on his forehead. "Nobody's told me his name yet."

"I am not surprised, Mr. Potter, not surprised," Ollivander said, nodding slightly. "In the past, to say his name was to call down terrible misfortune. But you should not be too worried by the match, Mr. Potter… thirteen-and-a-half inch yew is a very different wand to eleven-inch holly, and of course He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did do great things."

"I don't think it's really right to say they were great things," Harry protested. "I know what you mean, but – oh, I was going to ask..."

He indicated the wand he was holding in a forepaw. "Is there a good way for me to carry this? When I walk it's going to be hitting the ground a lot."

Mr. Ollivander examined Harry up and down with his luminous eyes.

"Perhaps in your pockets, Mr. Potter?"

"Oh, yeah, good point," Harry realized. "I'm not really used to having pockets."

* * *

"What kind of wand do you have, Hagrid?" Harry asked, as they left Ollivanders several galleons lighter and one wand richer.

"Well, I used to have a big oak wand," Hagrid replied, sounding embarrassed. "It got snapped in half when I was expelled, though… still got the pieces, mind."

He held on tightly to his umbrella as he said it, and Harry thought about that for a long moment.

"My goodness, is that a dragon?" someone asked. "Rubeus, where on earth did you find robes for a dragon?"

"Madam Malkins?" Harry answered, looking up at the man who'd spoken. "She did really well, they fit great so far – I can even fly in them."

"This here's 'Arry Potter, Dedalus," Hagrid added. "I'm helpin' him get his Hogwarts stuff."

"Oh, goodness – it is?" Dedalus asked. "But – I never thought – goodness!"

He offered his hand, and Harry shook it a little awkwardly. "Daedalus Diggle at your service, Mr. Potter! Such an honour, it really is… and thank you for all you've done."

"I'm afraid I don't really remember any of it," Harry confessed. "It was all quite a long time ago and I was very young."

"Oh – I suppose, yes, but nevertheless – thank you," Mr. Diggle reiterated. "It's a pity my son already has all his Hogwarts things – I'm sure he'd be delighted to meet you!"

Seeing Mr. Diggle talking to him seemed to break the ice, and three or four more witches and wizards approached Harry to shake his paw.

* * *

It felt like quite a long time before Harry and Hagrid managed to reach Flourish and Blotts, the bookshop on Diagon Alley, and Harry was bright and alert when they did – looking around with amazement at the books, which were much more impressive-looking than most books he'd seen in the library. It seemed like they were all hardback, and usually quite beautifully made, though most of them didn't have any pictures on the front cover.

The book list from the Hogwarts letter was what got them started, mostly volumes which looked like school textbooks but which were _magic_ school textbooks – and therefore much more interesting – but Harry wasn't willing to leave it at that, and as soon as they had the final book on the list (a book about self-protection) he loped up to the counter and asked the shopkeeper where the fiction books were. That got him pointed to an aisle up against one wall which _was_ full of paperbacks, and when Hagrid caught up with him Harry was already staring at one book in particular.

"Hagrid," he said, confused. "I'm in this one."

Hagrid took a look at the cover and chuckled. "No, lad, that's a Norwegian Ridgeback. Lovely type o' dragon, mind. Lovely beasts."

"No, that's not what I mean," Harry explained, turning the book over to show the back cover and the short blurb on it. "It's a book about _human_ me _fighting_ a dragon."

Hagrid peered closer, his lips moving slightly as he read.

"Ah," he said, wincing. "Yeah, that's a mite odd. Not sure where this whole idea of writin' books about yeh came from, an' I can see how you'd find it all weird..."

Harry put that particular book back on the shelf, and looked at the other ones he'd pulled down. It seemed as though Wizarding fiction books _did_ have cover pictures, and he'd gone through finding just about all the ones he could which featured a dragon somewhere on them.

"Do you read any of these, Hagrid?" he asked, looking at a book called _Tooth and Fang_ which seemed a bit more to his taste.

"No, not much of one for stories like that," Hagrid told him. "Much prefer books about real creatures an' how to take care of them, and suchlike."

That got him a nod from Harry, who understood what Hagrid meant.

"I wonder if I could get all of these," he said. "How many knuts in a galleon is it?"

"Seventeen sickles to a galleon and twenty-nine knuts to a sickle," Hagrid answered promptly.

"Okay, so these are..." Harry began, adding up in his head. "Well, if I only get four of this big series of them for now, that's about fifteen sickles. So less than a galleon… is that okay?"

"Harry, that money's yours," the big man told him. "I wouldn't tell yeh it wasn't a mistake to spend the whole lot on sweets, but don't be worried about buyin' some books."

Harry nodded, thinking about that, then looked at the rest of the bookstore.

"...what other creatures books are there?" he asked, ears perking up a little. "Maybe I could get some of those as well. And maybe another history book..."

The idea of having a nice big book collection, made up of _his_ books that _he_ owned, was very tempting indeed.

* * *

It was at least two in the afternoon when Hagrid finally managed to drag Harry out of the bookshop, pointing out that they had lunch to get, and the twine-tied packages full of books stacked up were higher than his snoozing snowy owl's cage.

As they ate lunch – a hearty meal from the Leaky Cauldron, with Harry lying on the bench on one side of a booth table and Hagrid taking up the entire other side – Harry asked one of the questions that had been bothering him.

"How am I going to get all this stuff home, Hagrid?" he said. "And where am I going to keep it? My cupboard's a nice lair, but..."

"Ah, well now," Hagrid replied, thinking about that. "I'm sure them Dursleys will sort summat out if you tell 'em, and if not then you get that owl of yours to bring me a letter. I'll be right down an' make sure you're all sorted."

Harry nodded. "And… um… if you can help me get it all to the train, I think I'll be okay at the other end."

"Good lad," Hagrid told him. "Might be I could see about making them lighter?"

"That's not really the problem," Harry told him, and ate another bite of steak. "It's just trying to carry them all at once, but… I _think_ I'll be okay."

"Good lad," Hagrid repeated, giving him a scratch under the chin. It might have felt quite surprising, but Harry found out that it felt a lot like a different sort of hug – caring and gentle, and from a man like Hagrid who'd shown him nothing but kindness today it was just a pleasant thing to happen.

"Oh, and here's your train ticket," Hagrid added. "First o' September, Kings Cross. It's all on there."

"Thanks, Hagrid," Harry said, taking the envelope and putting it with the rest of his new things, then picked out some of the big, hearty chips and ate them as well. "This has been a really odd birthday, but it's been really nice as well."

* * *

Hagrid's help was invaluable in getting Harry's things down the road, across the river by Underground Train – another new experience for Harry, who nearly caught his tail in the door – and then onto the train from Waterloo Station back in the direction of Surrey.

The young dragon watched from the window until Hagrid was out of sight – which happened quicker than he expected, the big man vanishing from view when he blinked – then stepped back to lie down across two seats and watch the countryside go past.

"Excuse me, young man?"

Harry looked around, surprised, and saw a woman giving him and his packages an odd look.

"Why are you wearing a dress?"

The dragon looked down at his Hogwarts robes, and felt a faint heat in his cheeks – realizing that, while she couldn't see that he was a dragon, she _could_ see his clothes.

"I just got them today," he explained. "They're a school uniform and they had to be fitted, and I was so busy shopping I forgot to change out of them again."

"Oh, I see," the woman said, nodding in understanding.

Harry stretched out his wing in front of his pile of supplies – books, owl and equipment – and much to his relief the woman didn't ask about any of those things and sat back to read a book.

That sounded like a good idea to Harry as well, so he got one of the novels out of his new purchases and began to read it.

It seemed like it wasn't actually the first book in the series, and it was about an Auror – which sounded like a magical policewoman – investigating a murder where the victim had been killed by being set on fire.

The fact that there was a dragon on the front cover made Harry fairly sure he knew _how_ it had been done, but there was always the possibility that that was a fake-out. Besides, it did seem quite well written.

* * *

AN:

And now a small subsection of the Wizarding World knows about Harry, and Harry knows about a small subsection of the Wizarding World.

Funny the changes that can result from a shorter train journey and an earlier start.

In case you're wondering, the reason why Harry thinks of Ruth as a _boy's_ name is because of the White Dragon from Pern.


	4. A Loft Is A Normal Place To Live

The Dursleys were quite upset to see Harry turn up on their doorstep again, especially with a collection of weird books and objects and even a live owl, but Harry volunteered to make dinner and that seemed to take the wind out of Uncle Vernon's sails a bit.

Harry's pile of books and other things turned out to not fit in his cupboard, even without Harry in there, and so after putting together a chicken and leek pie Harry brought up the subject of where he was going to sleep.

To his surprise – perhaps prompted by how recently it was that Hagrid had visited – his aunt and uncle were quite receptive to the idea of Harry changing where he slept. Perhaps it was the reminder that he still lived in a cupboard and that Hagrid could quite easily have become very angry about it, or perhaps just the incontrovertible fact that keeping an owl in a cupboard would be functionally impossible, but before the evening was out Harry and all his things were moved up into the bedroom he'd suggested instead. Not Dudley's second bedroom, which was kept as an overflow for his toys, but the loft of the house.

At some point in the past a roof window had been fitted to Number Four, Privet Drive, and Harry had pointed out – politely – that it would let his owl fly out to hunt, it would keep him out of the way, and that they would have the loft completely available for the whole of the rest of the year when he was at his school.

Faced with the prospect of Harry living in the loft – which got very hot in the day and very cold at night, as it was outside the house insulation – or of him taking one of Dudley's bedrooms away from him, Aunt Petunia had decided that the loft was the better option and had cajoled Uncle Vernon into accepting it. So Harry took his things up the ladder into the loft, clearing himself out a space not far from the window, and piled up his books, his school things and the few hundred letters he'd gathered up that Hagrid had provided.

The window was swiftly propped open so his owl could fly out and hunt, and as his birthday drew to a close Harry lay down in starlight on an irregular pile of paper, paperbacks and hardbacks which felt entirely comfortable and right and _his_.

All in all, it had been a _really good_ birthday.

* * *

Harry's new lair had one major advantage over his old one downstairs, and while it was one he would have had in a bedroom as well it was still one he was very happy with.

Namely, the window was large enough and he was small enough to let him sling on a backpack early in the morning, climb out the window, and fly off into the sky. It wasn't something he did every day, because he had a lot of books to read, but with a full month to wait until his first day of school it was a valuable way to vary up his day.

Another way of doing that was to continue to do the chores. Aunt Petunia seemed to be completely baffled by his willingness to still cook and clean, and Uncle Vernon seemed to harbour faint suspicions that Harry was just playing along until he did something awful.

Harry wondered if Uncle Vernon was a bit paranoid, really. It wasn't as if Harry had ever _done_ anything to him.

Well, admittedly Harry _was_ a dragon, but Uncle Vernon didn't know that bit.

* * *

"Hmm..." Harry pondered, tail flicking idly from side to side as he lay on his back in the dawn light. "I think we really need to decide on a name for you, girl."

His snowy owl hooted softly, fluttering out from her perch to land on a foreleg, and he smiled and touched her back – pleased by how quickly the intelligent owl had become used to him.

"The first idea I had was Ruth," he went on softly, in deference to how it was still quite early in the morning. "He's a white dragon, but it's more of a boy's name than a girl's name."

The owl clucked disapprovingly.

"Not what you want?" Harry asked, and the owl bobbed her head slightly. "Then what about one of the other names from those books? Ramoth?"

This time she seemed slightly more interested, and Harry clarified that Ramoth was a large golden dragon who was very much in charge. The name was ultimately rejected, though, and so was the similar Wirenth.

"Not interested in gold dragons, then?" Harry checked, and the snowy owl confirmed his guess with a quick nibble on his talon. "Okay, what about Imraith?"

That one took a bit more explaining, and the owl considered it carefully before rejecting it as well – specifically when Harry got to the bit about how she'd _fought_ a dragon.

Smiling at that, Harry moved on – though the snowy owl seemed very picky indeed, rejecting name after name as it came up. Polgara and Sephrenia went by, as did Rhyssa, Esmerelda and Asheth, and as dawn broke over Surrey she rejected every one.

Harry actually ran out of names to suggest and had to ask his owl to take off while he rolled over – letting him dig his schoolbooks out of the pile and search through them, paging back and forth randomly. There was a lot of interesting history that he was skipping past, things like a man born in the fourteenth century with no listed death date or how Merlin apparently _was_ a real, historical person – did that mean King Arthur was as well? - but after several more suggested names like Nimue and Pythia Harry finally stumbled upon one which his choosy owl seemed to like.

"Hedwig of Silesia was a witch born into a Muggle noble house," Harry read out. "Despite her position of great importance in Muggle society, Hedwig was able to use her magic with subtlety to avoid being seen _as_ a witch – something that was not essential in the time before the Statute of Secrecy. Hedwig was also involved in fighting the Mongolian Invasion in twelve forty-one to forty-two, defeating the Mongolian grand shaman in single combat at the end of a large magical battle and forcing his Muggle army to retreat."

He looked up at the owl now perched on the fold of his right wing. "What do you think, girl?"

She paused, then hooted in agreement.

"All right, Hedwig it is," Harry decided.

* * *

One of the things Harry had had to move out of the way to pile up his bed was an old luggage trunk. He sort of recognized it from one of the Dursleys' old holidays, back from before he was a dragon he thought, and it was what they'd used to transport Dudley's toy collection at the time.

Dudley's collection of toys was now far too large to actually carry even in such a big trunk, and so it had been up here for years – so Harry duly appropriated it for his own, planning on using it to carry his things to the train. It didn't have wheels, which was a bit of a problem, but Harry was pretty sure he could move it around a bit at least – and most of the journey would be by train anyway.

That prompted Harry to open the envelope Hagrid had given him, to double-check on the details of his train journey, and _that_ made him stop and stare at the ticket.

It said that the train left from Kings' Cross station at eleven o'clock on September the first, but it _also_ said that the train left from platform nine-and-three-quarters.

Harry looked again, and it still said platform nine-and-three-quarters.

Then he put the ticket back in the envelope, set it aside, shifted the heavy trunk so it covered the loft hatch, and climbed out of the window.

Hedwig barked sleepily at him, and he reassured her with a nod before taking flight.

* * *

Flying all the way to Kings' Cross was about as far as Harry had ever flown in one go before – normally he went to visit the Barbican Library in London when he was going that far – and when he backwinged down to land outside the station his wings had the kind of pleasant burn you got from long but not-too-long exercise.

Furling them with a clatter of wing membrane, Harry made his way into the main station. There were no signs for platform nine-and-three-quarters, indeed it took a while to even be sure he'd found platforms nine and ten because the platform numbers started at zero instead of one… but after half an hour or so Harry had to pronounce himself stumped. He'd even asked at the desk, and the lady there had been nice enough but totally confused by the question.

After one last count of the train lines coming out of the station from the air, Harry admitted defeat. He turned for home, then remembered just how much flying he'd done so far today, and adjusted course for the familiar Barbican Library instead.

Perhaps he'd find a nice book to read while there, and anyway he needed to rest his wings. Normally he was okay to head back home after perhaps two hours of rest, so that would mean he'd be back by the middle of the afternoon.

* * *

When Harry made his approach before landing on the Dursleys roof, he noticed that the greenhouse roof was smashed. He wondered if he was going to get the blame for it, and was a little nervous about what his relatives would think up as punishment, but it turned out that it was actually Dudley's fault – apparently he'd thrown his tortoise through it for some reason or other.

Harry mostly felt sorry for the tortoise, but he had something else to do – a new plan he'd thought of on the way home, to solve the mystery of the train and how to get on it. His school supplies included plenty of paper and rolls of parchment, along with three or four quills and some ink, and after a little practice in using a quill Harry wrote a letter.

* * *

_Dear Neville,_

_I hope you're well. I don't think we actually talked about what you got for your birthday – I hope you enjoyed what you got for it. I'm mostly the sort of dragon who likes having books, but I've not had many birthdays where I get presents so far so maybe I'll get bored of them some day._

_I was wondering if you could help me out. My Hogwarts ticket says that I need to take the train from Platform 9¾ at eleven o'clock, but I had a look at Kings Cross station and I can't actually find that platform. Do you know how to get onto it?_

_Thanks for the help. I can't ask my aunt and uncle because they don't really know much of anything about magic._

_Yours,_

_Harry._

* * *

Looking it over, Harry thought about whether he'd need to rewrite it before deciding that it said what he wanted it to say.

Waiting a few minutes for the ink to dry, he folded it up and put it into an envelope from the local post office.

"Hedwig?" he asked, and the snowy owl fluttered her wings – bright and alert as the sun set. "Can you get this letter to someone called Neville Longbottom? I don't know where he lives."

Hedwig gave Harry a tolerant look, like a school teacher being asked if _she_ could do the simple maths problem on the board, and stuck her leg out. Smiling at her confidence, Harry tied the letter to her leg before standing aside to let her swoop silently out of the window.

If that was all it really took to send letters in the magical world, he could see why they used owls. It probably made sending parcels a bit more difficult – or did it? Maybe it depended on the owl – but he could never have posted a letter in a normal postbox with just a name and expected it to arrive.

* * *

Neville's letter arrived the following evening, carried by a smug-looking Hedwig, and Harry assured her that he'd never doubted her as he untied the envelope and opened it.

There were a few nervous blotches on the parchment, and one or two crossed-out words, but skipping over those Harry read with interest.

It turned out that Neville _hadn't_ known how to get onto the platform, but he'd asked his grandmother and she'd informed him of the trick. It seemed you simply ran at the dividing line between platforms nine and ten, the faster the better, and if you got it right you could run right through the wall and end up in the special magical platform nine and three quarters.

Harry supposed that with how many people needed to get the train – even if Hogwarts was a really small school – he'd probably have run into one of them at some point, but it was nice to be sure.

Neville also mentioned how he'd got several presents for his birthday, but that the one he liked the most was some plants (only some of which Harry had even heard of), and from there the rest of the letter was questions about what it was like growing up in a Muggle house.

* * *

Time passed, as it did.

Harry read through _Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them_, first the shorter version and then the unabridged one Hagrid had pointed him at, and also read a good chunk of _One Thousand Magical Herbs And Fungi_ just looking for the plants Neville had mentioned in his letter. From there he moved on to a book about the wizarding perspective on dragons, which vaguely disquieted him when he read about just _how many_ things wizards made from bits of dragon, and dipped in and out of his other textbooks as the fancy took him.

But those weren't the only books Harry owned now, and he read some of the others as well. The detective novel had been quite fun, with the twist focused not on whether the murder weapon had been a dragon but on _which_ dragon had done the deed, and while it looked like the other books didn't involve dragons Harry was interested enough to make a mental note.

The next one along was more of a disappointment than anything. Harry had hoped it was going to be about how dragon tamers handled their charges, but it was actually much more about a love triangle between a young woman from somewhere in the USSR, a dragon tamer, and the magical government employee she was engaged to be married to.

It was all very disappointing, with dragons only showing up once in the entire book despite their prominent place on the cover, and Harry had decided _not_ to chase up any future books from that series – even without the slight surrealism caused by reading a book where the main character was from a country visibly falling apart in the news as he read it.

Then there were four small books, all from the same large series, which were just baffling as far as Harry was concerned. They were all about young witches who learned to ride dragons, and the dragons appeared not so much as actual animals (let alone the complex, brave characters that were the dragons of Pern or the sly, wrathful Smaug) but a little more like motorcycles – there to be ridden about or cooed over, not to do things for themselves. Most of the books covered the friendships and arguments between a dozen or more of the girls at the school, often over quite unimportant-seeming things, and after much puzzling Harry had decided that they were probably not for him.

The same could not be said for _Tooth and Fang_. Not only was it about dragons, but it was about an entire society of intelligent dragons who had to hide themselves away from wizards in the same way that wizards hid away from Muggles. Complicating this already difficult task was that the entire dragon population appeared to live _inside_ Beauxbatons, a wizarding school in France, and that naturally simply _moving out_ was completely out of the question.

It was both relatable and very entertaining, from a scene where two twenty-foot dragons had to hide inside a single broom cupboard not remotely big enough for one of them to an entire major plot point hinging on how none of the Beauxbatons wizards ever looked up, and Harry had to stifle his giggles to avoid waking the Dursleys too early in the morning.

The small collection of wizarding fiction he'd acquired in Diagon Alley was carefully kept separate from the larger pile of books Harry had picked up from Muggle bookshops – mostly second-hand, though with a few new paperbacks from series he'd read up to that point – and which, along with the rest of his collection and his robes, would just about fill up his newly acquired trunk.

Harry was fairly sure that he'd be working hard once he reached school, and so he did his best to fill the days with memories to take with him up to Hogwarts – sunning himself on the roof of the tallest building in Little Whingeing, flying home through a summer downpour with the rain drumming on his wings and all four legs clutching his rucksack below him, sharing a nighttime flight with Hedwig under the full moon, and reading books which sent him to Eosia and Valdemar and Krynn and a dozen other places.

The black dragon wasn't sure whether knowing that magic was completely real made the books better or not, or whether that was just that he was reading for hours on end in his room rather than in the library, but there was something about it which gave every book an extra spice.

* * *

AN:

August.

Not all that much to it, but it was shorter in the original book – and I wanted to show Harry's new sleeping arrangements.

I did seriously consider a lot of the names that Harry brings up, but I was making so many mistakes of calling her Hedwig by accident that I decided to go with an expanded explanation of _why_ he picked the name.

Also, it is actually canon that Harry's trunk turns up at some point in August - he doesn't get it in Diagon Alley. Thus I assume it's one of the Dursley ones.


	5. It'd Be Quicker To Fly

Not long after dawn on September the First, Harry Potter yawned and rose from his bed.

He stretched, hind legs first then forelegs, and his wings reached out and up far enough to just about touch the eaves of the roof. Then he shook himself, loosening up all his joints, and checked the railway timetables.

Rather than rely on the goodwill of his uncle to make it to Kings Cross, Harry had elected to instead make use of public transport. The railway station wasn't too far, and from there he could head into London and use the underground trains to get to where he needed to go.

It would have been simple to go all the way to Waterloo and then go by tube train, but after looking at the map of the underground line Harry had chosen a different route. By getting off one stop early, at Vauxhall, he could use the Victoria Line and go all the way from there to Kings Cross without having to change trains – while all the underground train lines from Waterloo itself didn't go where he wanted, which would mean more changing trains and more moving his heavy trunk and Hedwig's cage around.

It took perhaps half an hour to make sure he'd piled all his belongings into the trunk, with a set of robes on top – he'd put them on on the train – and his equipment stacked beneath them and held in place with books and a number of Hogwarts letters for padding. (The rest went in a nondescript box to be left in the loft.)

"All ready for the journey?" he asked, and Hedwig hooted softly at him. Taking that as agreement, he shut her cage door, then began the process of moving his things out of the house.

This one had taken him some careful thought. Bumping his trunk down the loft ladder was all too likely to wake the Dursleys, which would just make things more awkward, while flying out the window would mean leaving it unlocked and that would have the same effect. So once everything was packed, Harry pushed his trunk so it was half out the window before crawling out on top of it.

A few awkward minutes resulted, but it was still quite early, and Harry unfurled his wings and tensed before pulling the trunk the rest of the way out the window. He beat his wings as hard as he could, raising a storm of dust from the tiles, and slowly lowered the trunk to the street outside.

Hedwig's cage came next, carried somewhat more easily as it wasn't at the outer limit of what he could fly with even for a few seconds. Then Harry went back inside, shut the window and pulled the handle across, then crept out of his loft and downstairs to the front door.

It shut behind him with a click, and Harry was on his way to school.

* * *

Most of his remaining pounds sterling went on a train ticket from Little Whingeing to Vauxhall, with just enough left over to get lunch and the underground. Harry was quite proud of his careful budgeting, not least because it meant he'd been able to buy as many books as possible, and wrestled his trunk onto a half-empty near-dawn train – it was a Sunday, which meant there were no commuters – and settled down to enjoy the trip.

If he could have reduced the weight of his trunk, and there was almost certainly some kind of magic for that, he could have flown straight to Kings Cross. But this way he could read a book, the work of carrying his trunk was mostly done by the trains instead, and he'd still be well ahead of schedule.

* * *

Harry had not factored in one of the most important facts about British railways – not to rely on them.

After more than an hour of delay outside a station called Queenstown Road – which had had Harry seriously considering the idea of pushing the train into London himself – they finally reached Vauxhall, and Harry dragonhandled his trunk off the train with Hedwig's cage handle held gently in his teeth.

Reminding himself every few seconds not to bite down, Harry navigated his way down to the Victoria line with one eye on the time. The ticket across London cost exactly as much as he'd planned, and after several awkward minutes he was on the second leg of his journey.

* * *

Five stations went past in fifteen minutes, and by half past nine Harry was in the maze of tunnels underneath King's Cross station. Vauxhall had been simple enough, but this was immensely confusing – with five underground lines and three conventional rail lines all sharing the same station – and Harry was uncomfortably aware that the combination of his heavy old-fashioned trunk and his live owl was attracting more than a bit of attention, even if none of the people down here could see that he was a dragon.

"Is that a dragon?" someone asked.

Harry turned, startled – sending his glasses bouncing across the floor – and saw a young boy about his age with a roller trunk staring at him.

"Stop staring, Dean!" a woman told him. "And of course it's not, it's an owl."

"Not the owl, mum," Dean replied. "There, carrying the trunk and the owl cage – can't you see, er, him? Her?"

"You mean me?" Harry asked, hooking a paw through Hedwig's cage to lower it.

"No, I mean the other bloody dragon!" Dean countered, and his mum waved her hand at him.

"Dean Thomas! I didn't raise you like that!"

"Sorry, Mum," Dean winced. "But… you seriously can't tell he's a dragon?"

"Hold on," Harry said, retrieving his glasses. "You _can_ tell I'm a dragon?"

He tilted his head. "Hogwarts, right?"

"Yeah, that's me," Dean agreed. "I should have guessed I run into some random dragon in the middle of London, it's going to be magic."

"What _are_ you talking about, Dean?" Mrs. Thomas (?) asked him.

"It's magic," Harry explained helpfully. "I think, anyway."

"Yeah, you think," Dean snorted. "Could be any other reason."

"I did only find out about magic about a month ago," Harry volunteered. "Until then I thought this just happened to growing boys sometimes – or girls, I suppose."

"Yeah, because _that's_ normal," Dean said, smiling. "So you're another muggleborn?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm not, but I grew up with my aunt and uncle, and they're not magical," Harry said. "Do you have any idea how to get up to where the railway platforms are? I'm completely lost here."

* * *

"This is so freaky," Dean said softly, glancing around at the various people going in all directions through Kings Cross. "I mean, we're getting _some_ odd looks, but that's because of your owl. Not because you're a _dragon_."

"Yeah, but I'm kind of used to it," Harry replied. "Actually being noticed to be a dragon is the stranger thing."

The black boy shook his head. "No, the stranger thing is that you haven't told me what your team is yet."

"I don't have a team," Harry told him – truthfully. He'd never had much time for football after discovering that the ball striking his wings was apparently considered 'handball', and hadn't had either the inclination or the opportunity to listen to the radio or watch TV at the Dursleys – certainly not enough to actually follow a team.

"Well, you're from Surrey, so… Crystal Palace?" Dean guessed. "That sounds like a thing a dragon would like."

"It sounds like a place a dragon would live," Harry told him. "And no, I'm not a fan of Crystal Palace."

Dean almost stopped, struck by a horrible thought.

"...it's not Millwall, is it?"

"Who?"

"Phew," Dean said, hurrying back alongside the cart Harry's trunk was on top of. "Well, as long as it's not Millwall and it's not Hotspur, it's fine by me."

They rounded the corner to the point they could see platforms nine and ten.

"You've got your lunch, right Dean?" Mrs. Thomas asked.

"Of course I have, mum," Dean replied. "It went in my trunk with everything else, remember?"

"You'd still better check," she advised, and Harry slid his cart to a halt while Dean opened up his roller trunk to check.

"...Mum, did you give me egg and cress?" he asked. "Thanks!"

"Well, you're going to be going away for months," she said. "Don't forget to eat well when you're there, I don't know what wizard food is like..."

"Do you know?" Dean asked, glancing up at Harry. "I know you said you got brought up by people who weren't magic, but I thought you might have an idea."

"Sorry, no," Harry replied, shaking his head. "Most things are tasty to me. I have had a snack on the way, though, my train was delayed so I got one from the catering carriage."

"...blimey," Dean blinked. "You're not kidding about most things being tasty to you if you could eat one of those."

Harry shrugged, not mentioning that he'd actually eaten the packaging as well. (It had been a toss-up as to which had tasted better.)

Mrs. Thomas gave Dean a sudden hug, clutching him tightly and giving him a kiss. Harry looked away, feeling a bit awkward about the whole thing, and waited until she let go and told him to enjoy himself.

Then the two of them headed for the space between platforms nine and ten.

"Apparently it helps if you close your eyes?" Harry volunteered. "I wrote to someone about it and he told me that."

"Worth a try," Dean admitted. "But, anyway, since you say you don't support a football team… ever considered West Ham?"

* * *

Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, it turned out, was a lot like Diagon Alley in some ways.

It was another place that confused Harry slightly about where it actually was. He could clearly see the end of the platform, and the old-fashioned steam train sitting on the rails, but if he decided to _fly_ in that direction… what would happen?

Would he just appear on the railway line just outside Kings Cross? Would turning around mean he could get back _into_ Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters?

Was West Ham actually any good as a football club?

These and other questions preoccupied Harry as he and Dean made their way through the crowd. He sort-of-noticed all the witches and wizards who'd been standing by the entrance, but he didn't have a very good angle to see them down on the far side of his cart and the trunk it carried, and Dean had been talking about Trevor Morley and Julian Dicks and Frank McAvennie and other names which Harry had no context for whatsoever.

"…hope this is going to be a good season, though I don't know if Hogwarts has a TV or anything," Dean went on, slowing a bit as they got close to the train. "Any idea what would be a good place to go? This looks like a pretty old train."

"I'm not sure," Harry replied. "There should be a boy called Neville somewhere, he might not have arrived yet-"

"Merlin's teeth!" someone said. "That's a dragon!"

"It's a talking dragon!" a witch added.

"That's the Dragon Who Lived!" another wizard gasped. "Mr. Potter, it's such a pleasure to-"

"-is he here?"

"-let me through!"

"Don't most dragons tend to live?" someone asked, which Harry thought was probably a good question, but everyone else ignored him, and the crowd began to surge around him.

Dean shot Harry an amazed look, and Harry sighed.

"Maybe you should just get on the train," he suggested.

* * *

It took Harry about half an hour to make it the last twenty feet to the train.

He'd heard of journalists and reporters before, and occasionally seen them on television, but this was the first time he'd actually met any – and they were wizards and witches as well, which was stranger. One of them had a big old-fashioned flash camera, and Harry did his best to smile the way he'd practiced once in the mirror – without teeth.

There were plenty of other people who wanted to meet him as well, shaking his hand and telling him how astonished they were to get a chance to do so or just wanting to get a look at him.

After the first few minutes of shock, Harry adjusted a bit. He didn't really _enjoy_ it, but he had to admit that if he _hadn't_ been a dragon and one had turned up outside he'd have been interested enough to at least say hello.

About all the reporters seemed to want to know was simple information, at least. Why he was a dragon (he wasn't entirely sure), where he'd been for ten years (living with relatives), how much magic he knew (he didn't but he was interested in learning), and what Quidditch team he supported.

Perhaps his snort of laughter about hearing basically the same question _again_ had involved a little too much flame, because after that the reporter had looked nervous and moved on to a different topic.

Finally, about twenty minutes before eleven, Harry was able to get his trunk to the train and load it on – along with Hedwig – before hunting for somewhere to sit.

* * *

It turned out that the train had compartments, not the seats Harry had experienced on his two journeys to and from Little Whingeing, and furthermore that the first few he found were occupied. One was full of half-a-dozen older girls all talking about exams, the next contained three very big looking boys who Harry thought reminded him of Dudley if Dudley exercised, and then there was one where the first reaction he got was a shriek.

Shutting that door with a quick apology, he was saved by the sight of Dean – leaning out into the corridor to look for the source of the scream, then waving Harry down.

"This is kind of like a museum train or something, isn't it?" Dean asked, as Harry got his trunk to the door of the carriage. The human boy helped him take some of the weight, hefting it through into the compartment, and then Harry unbuckled it to get a few things out – one of the sets of his robes and a book, mostly – before hefting it up onto the rack.

"I don't really know," the dragon admitted, as he helped stow Dean's trunk as well. "I've not seen many trains."

"We mostly take the underground, but Mum takes us out on a trip somewhere special once or twice a year," Dean told him. "There's nothing like this, though."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, my aunt and uncle wouldn't do that kind of thing, not for me. Though come to think of it they wouldn't really take the train, either."

He shrugged his wings. "So what was it like when you got your Hogwarts letter?"

"Oh, wow," Dean chuckled, grinning. "It was the craziest thing. This woman called Professor McGonagall came to visit to show us what's what, and she showed us magic was real by turning one of the chairs into a camel. I bet you didn't have to have that, even if you did grow up with people who can't use magic."

"Actually, I don't think they liked magic very much," Harry replied, musing. "I mean, if they knew about it at all. I don't think I'm sure about that."

"Right, right, they didn't know you were a dragon," Dean realized. "But-"

The compartment door opened, and half-a-dozen students of different ages all stared in.

"Wow," one of them said. "Are you really Harry Potter?"

"I _think_ so," Harry replied. "That's certainly my name."

"Hey, we were talking," Dean protested.

* * *

After that group of gawpers went away, apparently satisfied, Harry mentioned how he'd been led around Diagon Alley by Hagrid.

The big man's style seemed much more entertaining to Dean than McGonagall had been. He found the trouble Hagrid had had with pounds sterling as amusing as Harry had (especially now that he had the context of how bizarre _Wizarding_ money was, at least in how it didn't use nice round numbers) and Harry was halfway through telling the story of how he'd reacted down in Gringotts when he paused and held up a talon.

Opening the door, he waved. "Neville, thanks for the help with the platform."

"Oh, um… it was nothing, really," Neville replied, going a bit pink.

"Have you got a compartment yet? This one's got plenty of room," Harry added, and after another nervous glance Neville brought his luggage and his pet toad through to join them. A girl came through as well, glad of somewhere to sit, but when she saw Harry her jaw dropped and she went quiet for a bit.

Dean Thomas introduced himself, Harry introduced Neville to Dean, and the girl said her name was Hermione Granger. She was a muggle-born, like Dean, and when she heard Harry's name she began rummaging through her own trunk before taking out a book.

"You're the Harry Potter in here?" she asked. "The one who defeated the Dark Lord?"

"I don't really remember it," Harry replied, not for the first time.

"Why don't they say you're a dragon?" she went on. "I'd think they'd say something about that, and if something that important is missing from _Modern Magical History _then I'm not sure if I can trust the rest of it, though the textbooks themselves all seem quite solid. I've read through them all by now, of course, though come to think of it none of them mention dragons attending Hogwarts either."

"I think I'm the first," Harry told her. "And I don't think anyone except me knew I was a dragon until about a month ago."

Hermione had a few more questions, after that, about how that could work, then about what the limits of the magic were (Harry had to admit he'd never actually tried to test it, not having known it existed for most of his draconic life) and finally about how being a dragon would make his magic different. But when she saw what Harry had got out of his bag to read, she did a double-take.

"You read fantasy books?" she asked. "I've read a few, but – well – you're a dragon? I know I'm a witch, but I haven't read any since I found out because I was too busy."

"That's why I read them," Harry replied. "I kind of wanted to find out what dragons were meant to be like. The dragons in this series aren't very, er… intelligent? But I like the way they're written."

"You seriously read _all_ the textbooks?" Dean asked, blinking. "Wow. I didn't know we had to do that."

"I didn't either," Neville said, sounding worried. "I hope that doesn't mean the Sorting goes wrong for me?"

"If it does, I'm stuffed too," Dean told him, clapping the magically-raised boy on the shoulder.

The train rocked at that point as it got moving, leaving the magically-hidden platform, and by an unspoken agreement the four of them stopped their conversation to watch.

They'd barely left the station when another group of visitors came along, wanting to see the rumoured dragon-on-the-train for themselves, and this time Harry's tail twitched slightly as he went through pretty much the same set of questions.

He wouldn't have minded if they were a bit more original.

Probably.

* * *

By the time they were out of London, there had been four more sets of visitors (Harry had counted). Hedwig had also woken up, given Trevor the Toad a considering look and begun preening her feathers, and Neville and Hermione had begun giving Dean a somewhat muddled account of what sounded like a _very_ confusing sport that was played a lot by Wizards.

Apparently the game was sometimes weeks long, but that depended how good two of the players were. It wasn't made any easier to follow by the fact that Hermione's knowledge was all out of a book she'd got (which she had open on her lap as they talked) while Neville had seen several games before but hadn't memorized the rules.

Harry had also started trying to read his book-for-the-train, which was meant to finish off the whole plot of the _Malloreon. _He was quite anxious to find out what happened, but all the interruptions meant he'd barely got to the bit where Garion and Zakath were talking to one another after the recap.

"...oh, no!" Neville said suddenly, after the latest group had left. "Where's Trevor gone?"

Harry put his book down again, slipping a bookmark into it, and sniffed.

"...he's not in here," he declared, able to smell toad but not _nearby_ toad. "The window's closed, so he didn't get out that way."

"It must have been when those boys asking if Harry could breathe fire and stuff had the door open," Dean realized. "Great…"

* * *

After some discussion, it had been concluded that there were two of them who could actually identify the toad in question. Harry was able to smell well enough to identify Trevor if need be (and that had prompted a four minute digression on how humans could not, in fact, tell animals apart by scent – something which came as a surprise to Harry, though on reflection it made sense) while Neville could naturally do so as it was his toad.

Unfortunately Harry's sense of smell wasn't good enough to tell if Trevor had gone towards the front or the back of the train, so the four of them had to split up. Neville and Hermione went one way, while Dean and Harry went the other – albeit after a delay caused by Harry being asked what he'd started to mentally describe as 'the obvious five questions'.

"Are you really Harry Potter?" (Yes.)

"Why are you a dragon?" (Don't know, sorry, it was a while ago.)

"How did you stop You-Know-Who?" (I was a baby, I don't know that either.)

"Can we see the scar?" (It isn't as if I'm wearing anything in the way)

"What magic can you do?" (None yet, that's why I'm going to school.)

Nobody seemed to be very creative about it all. Some of them came up with extra things to ask, but it seemed to him as though at least a few of them should have started with something different.

* * *

Harry's mental running tally of the number of times he'd been asked was up to at least a dozen by the time they reached one compartment, and Dean knocked before pulling the door open.

There were two girls and a boy inside, all of them clearly first- or second-years, though they were wearing Wizard-looking clothes so they were also almost certainly magical.

"Yes?" the boy asked.

"Wait, is that-" one of the girls began, and the boy shook his head.

"No, clearly not," he told her. "After all, if he _was_ Harry Potter, then we'd be able to see his scar. But he's obviously not, because there isn't a scar. Can you see one?"

"Blaise, this isn't you being funny again, is it?" the other girl asked. "I can _see_ the scar. And how many dragons do you think are on the train?"

"Dragon?" Blaise asked. "I thought you were talking about the other one."

Dean snickered.

"Have any of you seen a toad?" he asked. "Someone we met lost one, so we're looking."

"That's a much more sensible explanation than I was expecting," Blaise said, interrupting one of the girls again. "My first thought was that if either of you was Harry Potter going door-to-door on the train to introduce yourself, that would be quite odd. But since neither of you _is_ Harry Potter, I suppose I should have expected there to be another reason."

"Stop playing around, Blaise," the first girl sighed. "There's a toad right here, I was talking to you about it less than five minutes ago."

"It's my home life," Blaise shrugged. "It leaves me starved for meaningful attention."

The toad was duly produced, and Harry pronounced him to be Trevor. The girls introduced themselves, as well, as "Daphne" and "Tracey" respectively, and Harry left satisfied both with a rescued toad and with the memory of an unusually interesting conversation.

* * *

The train was going through fields by noon, and Harry had finally had a chance to get properly started on his book. He'd just reached the bit with the Dals when there was a hesitant knock on the door, and with a sigh he put it down again as Dean told the new person to come in.

Harry kept an eye on Trevor, to make sure he didn't make a new bid for freedom while the door was open, and a boy with brilliant red hair stuck his head around the door.

"Hey, is there a space here?" he asked. "My older brothers have invited their friend Lee Jordan in, and he's got a pet tarantula and-"

The boy shivered. "No thanks."

"What do you think?" Dean asked, looking over at Harry – who was taking up more space than any of the others, lying as he was across two seats.

"Bloody hell," the new boy breathed, catching sight of Harry.

"I did have an idea, actually," Harry replied. He lifted his book up to the luggage rack, crouched a bit, then leapt up there with a hiss of effort. His wings half-opened for stability, Harry resisting the urge to beat them because of how much it would mess up the small compartment, and then he was lying down on top of the luggage trunks.

"I thought so," the drake said, pleased with himself. "There you go."

"Isn't that, um… uncomfortable?" asked the newcomer, looking a bit baffled.

Harry shrugged his wings. "I slept in a cupboard for a few years, this isn't bad."

Besides, most of his body was on top of just about everything he owned in the world, and that felt _very_ dragon-like.

* * *

At about half past twelve a cart full of food and other things came past, and Neville offered to get them all something. Harry seconded that, jumping down to see what was on the cart, and ended up getting about a Galleon's worth of all the odd things on display to sample and share.

The pumpkin pasty was comparatively normal, except for the use of pumpkin, and Harry was quick to swap a few around for sandwiches – especially those of Ron, the boy who didn't like spiders, and who seemed very grateful that Harry was willing to eat the corned beef sandwiches he'd been given.

The fact that Harry had swallowed the wrapping as well drew more than a few stares.

"Wait, hold on," Dean began, blinking. "Did you just eat that greasepaper?"

Harry nodded. "Yes. It's kind of like the pasty, it's the wrapping around the tastier bits. I've never really found something I can't eat."

"Never?" Neville asked. "You mean, like… you could eat wood, or a plant pot?"

"Both of those," Harry agreed.

"Your digestion must be amazing," Hermione mused. "I don't think it said anything in the textbook about dragons eating anything other than meat."

"Just don't eat the chocolate frogs whole, they've got trading cards in," Ron warned. "Oh, hold on a minute… yeah, there's some Every Flavour Beans here."

He showed a packet to the rest of the compartment, most of whom had never seen one before. "Fred and George said there were some really awful flavours in these – it says every flavour and it really means it, there's stuff like spinach and liver and toast."

Curious, Harry picked out a jet-black one on the end of one of his talons.

"Watch out, mate, I've never seen one that colour before."

"Black," Dean said, thinking about it. "So is that going to be… what, burned toast?"

"Loam?" Neville suggested.

"Maybe it's just liquorice," Hermione said. "It doesn't have to be disgusting."

Harry shrugged his wings, and ate the bean.

"...hmm," he said. "I think that might be motor oil."

* * *

For some reason, Harry had the Every Flavour Beans to himself.

* * *

"Let's see if I manage to get this one," Dean said, holding the packaging of one of the Chocolate Frogs.

Harry watched his hands, crouching slightly, and his tail flicked from side to side a bit.

"You could at least try not to look like you're waiting for me to drop it, mate," the boy muttered. "Okay, um… here goes!"

He tore the packaging, and the enchanted chocolate immediately made a break for it. It hopped out of Dean's hands, and Harry pounced – though he flubbed it slightly, bouncing it off his nose, and Hermione yelped as she found herself catching the recently dragon-bounced chocolate with both hands.

Harry ended up piled in a heap under the window, then untwisted himself again, and since Hermione was occupied with the chocolate it was Neville who looked at the card that had been in the packet.

"Celsus?" he asked, confused. "I thought he was called Paracelsus."

"Paracelsus means 'Above Celsus'," Hermione told him. "Paracelsus named himself that way because he thought he was better than Celsus."

"Huh," Neville said.

"Mind if I have the next one?" Ron asked. "Let's see if I can keep a hold of this one."

As he caught the frog, however, the door opened – admitting a couple of boys who looked tough and a lot older than any of them.

"Are you really Harry Potter?" one asked.

Harry rolled his eyes, and was about to respond when Ron spoke up.

"Yes," the red-head answered.

"_You're_ Harry Potter?" the other snorted. "No, you're _obviously _a Weasley."

"Doesn't mean I can't answer the question," Ron pointed out.

The upperclassmen shook their heads, and the one who'd first spoken looked directly at Harry this time. "Why are you a dragon?"

"He doesn't know," Dean volunteered this time. "It was a while ago."

"How did you stop You-Know-Who?" the second one asked.

"He _was_ a _baby,"_ Hermione huffed. "He doesn't know that either. Honestly."

"Are we asking him or you guys?" the first upperclassman asked. "Seriously, what is this?"

"You're not exactly being original, mate," Dean said. "We know the answers to these because everyone's asked them."

"Shut it, you," the second one grumbled. "Can we see the scar, at least?"

"Why do people always think you're wearing a hat or something, Harry?" Ron asked.

Harry shrugged, having been quite confused about that himself.

"Come on, Adrian," one of the boys said. "Let's go. That Weasley at least is probably going to end up in Gryffindor anyway."

Ron seemed quite pleased by the comment, though Adrian did stick his head back around the corner as his friend left.

"Er… you don't know any magic yet, do you?"

"I thought that was why we were going to Hogwarts," Neville said, sounding honestly confused.

When the older boys had left, Harry slid the door shut with a paw. "Thanks, guys… I never thought I'd hear the same questions so many times in a row."

He jumped back up on the luggage rack after snagging the last packet of Every Flavour Beans, and opened his book again.

* * *

The train was moving through a hilly region an hour or so later, and Harry had just got to the bit where Zandramas revealed herself to be able to turn into a dragon (though not exactly a very nice one, because of what Zandramas was like) when the door slid open to admit three boys already wearing their school robes.

"They're saying all up and down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment," said a boy with a pale, pointed face. "_And_ that he's a dragon. Where is he?"

"Oh, um… hello, Draco," Neville said quietly.

Harry put his bookmark in place, noticing the two very large boys behind Draco, and said nothing.

"Well?" Draco asked. "Where's Harry Potter?"

Dean Thomas tried not to laugh, and Draco turned to him.

"Think something's funny, do you, _Muggleborn_?" he asked, making the word sound much nastier than Ron and Neville had.

"Well, yeah," Dean replied. "I mean, your name?"

"What's wrong with it?" Draco demanded.

"It means dragon," Hermione told him, looking up from a book she'd borrowed from Harry. "And you said you were looking for a dragon."

"Well, given who you're associating with, I don't see why I should expect you to know anything," Draco snorted. "Weasleys are practically Muggleborn anyway; my father said they've all got red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford."

"Hey!" Ron said, half-standing up, and one of the two big boys cracked his knuckles. Ron trembled slightly, but sat down again.

Harry had already decided he didn't like Draco very much, but that made him decide he didn't like Draco at _all_.

"Well, if he's not here, where is he?" Draco demanded.

Harry coughed.

It was quite satisfying to see all three of the boys jump a bit as they realized the shadows up on top of the luggage rack were actually a black dragon in repose.

"Wait – Trevor!" Neville yelped, spotting his toad making another break for it, and snagged him just before he hopped over the threshold. Draco looked down for a moment, then back up at Harry.

"You're not making a good stab at your first impression with the Wizarding World, you know," he said. "It's important to get to know the right sort, and of those you're associating with already only Longbottom's remotely worthwhile."

Hermione and Dean both reacted to that, one with a huff and the other with another repressed snort of laughter.

"What are you, a gangster or something?" the Muggle-born boy asked. "And how many wizards can there be if we all go to the same school? It took Harry half an hour to get to the train, I think he's made a pretty good impression already."

Draco went slightly pink.

"Potter, I'd be careful if I were you," he said. "If you make the same mistakes as your parents you'll go the same way they did. Better to make the right decisions now, don't you think?"

"What my parents did meant they died," Harry replied. "But it meant that I stopped He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, as well. I think they'd think it was worth it."

Draco seemed about to reply, but held his tongue.

"Something the matter?" asked an older girl with a shiny badge on her blue-trimmed robes, looking around the edge of the door.

"No, we were just leaving," Draco replied, and walked off with his friends (?) following him.

"That's good," the girl said, then gave the five first-years a considering glance. "Just so you know, it's about two hours until we get to Hogwarts – you might want to get changed fairly soon."

"Oh – thanks," Harry said, speaking for all of them.

* * *

The size of the compartment meant that they had to get changed in three sets – there was no way Harry and the other three boys could all get into their robes at once – and Neville and Dean went first.

Harry gathered that the girl who'd showed up earlier was a Prefect (like one of Ron's brothers was, it seemed), and that they were probably checking in on all the compartments to let them know they were most of the way to Hogwarts. It seemed a bit odd that what was turning out to be a nine hour journey didn't have more than perhaps one or two adults on the train, but perhaps there was some logic to it he hadn't seen.

Hermione went next, meaning all four boys were out in the corridor, and Dean spent the intervening time tugging on his robes and muttering about them. Harry asked if they needed to wear the pointy hats, and the reminder just made Dean shake his head.

"And I thought the uniforms for posh schools were stupid."

"My aunt and uncle sent my cousin to Smeltings," Harry volunteered. "His uniform has a big stick in it."

"What, like a wand?" Ron asked. "I thought Muggles didn't have those."

"No, just a stick," Harry clarified. "I think the only thing you can do is hit people with it."

Then it was their turn, and Harry discovered that perhaps he should have practiced putting on his robes at some point in the entire month of August. It took him fifteen minutes, along with help from both Ron and Neville, to finally get his wings and legs and neck in the right places without the robe forming a kind of giant ruff around his shoulders.

Harry did then glance over at his book, unsure how much of it he could finish but willing to give it a try, then snorted as he remembered something.

"What is it?" Dean asked.

"Oh, just – I'd almost forgotten about it, but that thing that happened with Draco," Harry told them.

"That was pretty funny," Ron nodded.

"But it was – hold on," Harry asked, and jumped up to grab onto the storage at the top of the compartment. He got a hindpaw over the lip for support, unbuckled his trunk, and rummaged around for a bit before finding what he was after.

"It reminded me of this," the young drake explained, showing them _Tooth and Fang_. "It's really funny, it's about this whole society of dragons hiding at a French magic school."

"How do they do that?" Hermione said. "Dragons are very large – well, except for you, and for young ones. But most dragons grow very quickly. I'd think they wouldn't be able to remain hidden very long at all."

"I know," Harry agreed readily. "But that's the thing, they're really helped out by this simple rule all the young dragons get taught."

He waited expectantly, and this time it was Neville who asked first.

"What's that?"

"Wizards," Harry replied, "don't look up."

After a moment's silence, all four of his new friends laughed. Harry grinned, then settled himself a bit on top of his trunk and began reading out a bit of the book.

_The Seeress of Kell_ could wait.

* * *

"_Monsieur Joseph finished his lecture, and asked if there were any questions,"_ Harry read out. _"Red saw his chance, and spoke up from the back of the class. 'What's the password into the staff room?' he asked."_

"What, really?" Ron said, trying not to laugh. "That was his big plan?"

"It gets better," Harry replied. _"'I'm sorry, I don't think I've met you before?' Monsieur Joseph asked. 'You are?'_

_Red answered quickly. 'Indigo Disguise,' he said, and adjusted his fake beard and moustache, sure he was completely undetectable."_

Over the giggles from the rest of the compartment, Harry continued reading. The dragon called Red, it turned out, hadn't quite made his disguise perfect… but only because there _was_ another student in the class called Indigo Des Guise.

The subsequent four pages described the dragon and the _real_ In. Des Guise getting into a duel of honour, and Red's plan to win the duel without exposing his true identity. They were almost at the opening for the duel when there was an announcement that the train would be reaching Hogsmeade Station in five minutes, and also that they should leave their things on the train.

"You've really got to lend me that book some time, Harry," Dean said. "Is it like that all the way through?"

"Well, the plans keep getting crazier," Harry replied. "Hold on."

He dropped down from the rack, his wand in one pocket of his robes, and corralled Trevor again. "There we go."

"Are all wizard fiction books like that?" Hermione asked.

"Not really, there's all sorts," Harry told her. "I just picked up anything with a dragon on it, but I didn't like half of them. That one was the best."

"Any idea what we do with pets?" Ron asked. "I could put Scabbers in my robe pocket, he's probably been in there before, but you can't really fit your owl in there."

"We probably just leave them on the train?" Harry guessed.

"Nah, I wouldn't trust Trevor in the train on his own," Dean pointed out. "He'd escape."

"I'll bring him," Neville decided.

* * *

Hagrid was there on the platform, calling for the first-years to follow him. Harry was pleased to see him, waving a hello, but then there came a bit of a problem.

The first-years had to ride boats to the glittering mountaintop castle that was to be their school, and there weren't supposed to be more than four to a boat.

After a bit of thought, Harry decided that – because there was a big, black lake in front of them – the reason for the boat ride was clearly to get across the lake. Since he had another way of getting across the lake, he solved the problem by spreading his wings and taking to the air.

It also meant he could stretch his wings after so long on the train, and he climbed rapidly into the air with a series of powerful wingbeats.

Unfortunately, Harry was enjoying himself so much in being able to fly – especially in a much wilder and more interesting place than Surrey – that he completely missed when the boats set off, and when he looked around again they'd vanished.

Worried that perhaps he'd made a mistake, Harry landed back where they'd started from (no luck there), then took off to scout around in case he'd just not spotted them. That took several minutes, and he was about to land at the castle front door and admit he'd managed to lose the other first-years when he spotted Hagrid walking out of a sunken passageway.

Alighting with a thump on the soft, damp grass, Harry blushed. "Sorry about that, Hagrid."

"No harm done, 'Arry," Hagrid told him with a chuckle. "Anyone else I mighta been worried, but you can fly and all."

"_We_ could fly if we were allowed broomsticks," someone grumbled.

* * *

AN:

* * *

And the train journey.

Draco is really quite amazingly unsubtle on the train in canon... which doesn't work very well with a Harry who's spent a lot of the last month reading heroic fantasy novels of one stripe or another.


	6. A Different Sort Of Dragon

Harry vaguely remembered that Hagrid had introduced himself as the 'keeper of keys' at some point – possibly while Harry was still waking up? - but instead of actually using the keys he probably kept to open the door he knocked instead.

The door was opened by a tall witch with a stern face and emerald green robes, who Hagrid addressed as Professor McGonagall, and Harry hung back a bit until he found his new friends.

"What happened to you?" Ron asked quietly, sounding worried. "I saw you take off, then you just vanished!"

"It's because he's all-over black," Dean volunteered. "If I had a raincoat on and it was dark, people sometimes couldn't see me back at primary school."

"I thought I'd fly alongside," Harry explained. "To save space. But I didn't see when you set off."

He looked back, sniffing, to confirm Trevor was still there – he had the feeling that keeping track of Trevor had been a full-time job for Neville in the past – as they were led through the cavernous entrance hall and into an antechamber.

The Professor briefly outlined the House system, telling them about how there was a process to sort students (but not what it was) and that students would spend most of their time with their house. There was also a bit about the House Cup, but Harry was already worried about something else.

What would happen if he ended up in a house without any of the friends he'd already made? Would he have to _not_ spend time with them?

Could they even make rules about which students you could spend time with?

Sitting on his haunches, he listened to the others discussing what the sorting process could be. Someone suggested that it was a written test, someone else suggested that maybe it was that you had to roll a dice, and one girl announced that she thought it involved pulling a House name out of a hat.

Then there was a gasp of surprise from near the main door.

"Oh, I say!" someone announced, and there were a lot more gasps from the first-years. "That's a dragon!"

"Is it, my good man?" asked another voice. "My goodness, so it is! How did a dragon get in here?"

"Make way!" a third voice called. "I've faced many dragons in my time-"

"Your time was three hundred years ago!" the first voice said, and Harry finally got a good look at them. There were about twenty ghosts, floating closer and spreading out so they could get a good look, and Harry waved.

"It looks rather more friendly than most dragons I've seen," said the third voice. "But that must be a trick! Fetch my sword!"

"Dragons don't usually wear robes, Lord Ridley," a plump little monk's ghost said. "Do you know, I think those are the new students!"

"Then we need to save them from the dragon!" Lord Ridley announced, flourishing a ghostly sword.

"Can you not slay me, please?" Harry asked, stepping forwards a little. "I _am_ a student… this is my first term, though."

"Don't mind Lord Ridley, he's quite harmless," another ghost said, bowing with a hand pressing his hat firmly to his head. "If he does try to slay you, please inform any Hogwarts ghost. Except Peeves, he's not really a ghost but it's easy to get confused."

"Thank you," Harry said, grateful for the support. "I'll remember that."

"What I don't understand is why none of you new students are surprised!" said another ghost, this one a woman with an enormous hairdo. "A dragon is amongst you, and you seem more startled by ghosts!"

"We've had up to nine hours to get used to the idea," Blaise said. "That is, if we hadn't heard the gossip – anyone who'd heard that has been thinking about the idea of a dragon at Hogwarts for more than a month."

One of the girls who'd shared a compartment with Blaise muttered something which Harry didn't catch, but based on his experience with them so far he could sort of guess it wasn't approving.

Then Professor McGonagall told them all to line up, and led them away from the ghosts and into the Great Hall.

* * *

Harry's first reaction to the Great Hall was to stop and stare, though he worked out the problem with that quite quickly when a girl tripped over his tail. He reacted just in time to flick his wing out and catch her, saving her from a nasty fall onto the stone flags, and once she was back upright he followed… whoever it was he'd ended up behind… through the hall itself, up towards the top table where the teachers were sitting.

The thousands of floating candles high overhead looked amazing, though he wasn't sure how much of his reaction was amazement at their beauty and how much was that they looked sort of tasty, and the golden plates made his talons itch slightly at the sight of so much precious metal. The enchanted ceiling overhead looked very impressive as well, though it was too light in the hall to see as many stars as you could on a proper dark night, and for a moment Harry wondered if they could extinguish the candles to get a better look.

Shrugging the idea off, he looked up at the teachers. There were some very strange looking people there – Hagrid at least he'd seen before, but there was a tiny little man who was sitting on several cushions and a really very old man with a long white beard, and at the other end of the table a woman with a red witch's hat sat next to a sallow-faced man who appeared to be dressed entirely in simple black robes.

Harry briefly noticed that the sallow-faced man was staring at him – and with an expression that looked like he was overcome with horror, or perhaps shock – before there was the scrape of wood on stone as a four-legged stool was put in front of them.

A very old-looking hat was put on the stool, and Harry tilted his head. _Were_ they going to be pulling names out of a hat?

Then it started to sing, and by the end Harry felt he had a better idea of what was going on.

Slightly.

* * *

Fortunately, the sorting process itself didn't seem to take all that long. When a name was called out (and they were going alphabetically) the student hurried to the stool, placed the hat on their head, and then the hat mumbled to itself for a bit before shouting out the name of the house – or sometimes shouted it out immediately, though Harry couldn't really tell if there was any sort of pattern to it.

Harry had been expecting that the first of the people he'd actually met properly who would get sorted was Hermione, but it transpired that it was actually one of the girls he'd met while hunting for Trevor – Tracey, whose surname was Davis and which meant that she went quite near the front of the list. She got about thirty seconds of mumbling, then was assigned to Slytherin, and walked over to that table accompanied by applause.

Hermione was naturally second, and went to Gryffindor after several minutes of Hat-based contemplation. Daphne (whose surname turned out to be Greengrass) went third, joining her friend with a much quicker decision, and Harry wondered whether she was cunning or underhanded or both.

Or maybe he was overthinking it. The song had mentioned a couple of features of each House, but were those really all of them? Maybe Slytherin was also for the people who liked snakes, or Ravenclaw for people who liked flying? Or perhaps Hufflepuffs liked oranges, that was a word it was supposed to be hard to rhyme.

Realizing he was still overthinking it, Harry looked around for something to take his mind off it, and turned his attention back to the table with all the teachers on it. The sallow man near the end seemed to have calmed down a bit, though he was still eyeing Harry (or at least Harry felt like it was him in particular who was being looked at), while there was a scarred-looking wizard also focused on Harry who was actually writing furiously on something the young dragon couldn't quite see.

At least the wizard on the end with a massive turban wasn't staring at Harry. In fact, the turbaned wizard was looking almost directly away from Harry.

The warning tingle of an incipient headache made Harry realize that this wasn't helping; he was now worried about teachers either seeing him as a study project or being scared of him, and neither was really very nice.

"GRYFFINDOR!" the hat announced, and Harry turned back to see who it had been. Embarrassingly, it was Neville, who must have been under the hat for several minutes and who Harry had completely missed.

Dean was paling slightly and Ron had gone a funny grey colour, and Harry wasn't sure how he looked either. Wouldn't this be much less stressful if they'd done it in private?

As it was, he knew it was coming, and he knew roughly when, but he had no idea how many people had names that were _ahead_ of him in the alphabet so every new name just ratcheted up the tension. It was sort of like how he imagined Impression would be (if you were one of the humans, anyway; dragons never had to wait for Impression).

Draco went to Slytherin very quickly indeed, the hat barely having time to touch his head, which only made Harry wonder about cunning again.

Maybe he just wanted to be with his two big friends, who'd also gone to Slytherin?

Hopefully when it was actually his turn it would be all right…

* * *

Over the next few minutes, Harry discovered that there were _four_ other people waiting to be Sorted whose surnames began with P, and all of them were before him in the alphabet. The twins Patil had been a little puzzling, as they'd gone to different Houses, and Harry briefly wondered if the whole thing was just random before his name was finally called.

Whispering broke out all over the hall, and Harry was slightly surprised to discover that at least some of the Hogwarts students had both _not visited him on the train_ and _not noticed the dragon standing in the row waiting to be sorted_.

Then he put the hat on, which fell over his eyes.

"Well, now!" said a small voice in his ear. "This is quite the surprise! I knew there was a dragon, most certainly, but you haven't always been a dragon, even if you think of yourself as one..."

Harry closed his eyes, and there was a pause.

"Where did you go?" the voice asked. "I swear you were there a moment ago..."

That made Harry blink, and the hat went on. "Ah, there you are! I see, I see, dragon scale, very magically resistant. Don't close those eyes, now… and, my word! Do you know, it's rare that I get a good book to enjoy? Not many people read before they come here, or at least not books worth reading..."

_What's actually going on?_ Harry asked, doing his best to think in the direction of the hat. _You're reading my mind?_

"Well, yes, yes, don't fuss! I've been doing it all this time, and it's quite honestly tradition," the hat replied. "Ah, yes, I see… don't worry, I may be a person but I'm quite happy with my lot. Well, I say that, it'd be nice to read a book or two every now and again, I'm sure you agree… but to sort students is the highlight of my year, and I really do spend most of the rest of the time sleeping."

Harry was sure not everyone had this kind of conversation. But maybe that was why Neville and Hermione had taken so long?

"Good, ah, drake," the hat informed him. "Very sharp… and, hmm. Well, now, as to actually sorting you, you present me with something of a puzzler. I know all about how to sort humans, but for dragons I'm flying quite blind. And no, it's not about your favourite colour, but you're quite right that not everything goes into every song. I do a new one every year, you know..."

* * *

After what had to be several minutes, Harry had the distinct feeling that the Sorting Hat was quite easily distracted.

"...of course, naturally none of the others would allow Godric to put a griffin on his banner! They said it was all magical creatures or none of them, you see – so that's why there's no dragon house, well, that and that they all preferred other magical creatures if a choice had to be made… I've always suspected old Salazar of sneaking a Basilisk into the Slytherin banner, though…"

The hat caught itself. "Oh, dear, where are my manners… I'm terribly sorry about this. Hmm… well, now… you could do well in Ravenclaw, most certainly – reminds me of a girl from earlier in that respect… Slytherin _would_ make you great, I think..."

_That's what Mr. Ollivander said about what He Who Must Not Be Named did,_ Harry countered. _I don't think I like that sort of great._

"True, true, I can see that… well, now, I believe that narrows the choice a little," the hat went on. "You'd certainly rather find out about a problem than not, but… ah, a pleasure to try and Sort, I must say, but if I had to make a choice I'd have to say GRYFFINDOR!"

* * *

Harry found a seat next to one of the ghosts – fortunately not Lord Ridley, who gave him a suspicious glare from the other side of the Gryffindor table – and shifted a bit to get his tail properly in place without overbalancing one way or the other, then turned to watch the rest of the sorting.

There weren't many left, and both Dean and Ron came over to Gryffindor – filling up some of the only few places left. Blaise was the last, and he was assigned to Slytherin by the hat after a minute or so of deliberation.

"There's a lot of applause for everyone," Harry said. "Is that normal?"

"Fairly normal," replied someone who he thought was _probably_ one of Ron's many brothers. "It's a big moment, though having you in Gryffindor house is more exciting than normal."

"It shouldn't be, really," Harry replied. "I know it's pretty much impossible for me to _not_ stand out with people who can see I'm a dragon, but I'm not used to it."

He looked over at Ron, who was sitting on the other side of the table. "Yours was fairly quick… did the sorting hat not say much to you?"

"Not really," Ron answered, thinking about it. "Why?"

"He seemed to get distracted really easily," Harry replied. "He spent most of the time with me talking about stuff like the personal tastes of the four wizards and witches the Houses are named after, and about books I'd read, and stuff. I think maybe he just doesn't get to talk all that much."

"Huh," Ron frowned. "I wonder what Neville and Hermione had."

He sniggered. "If that's how it works then maybe he didn't want to say a single word to Malfoy?"

"Isn't his name Draco?" Harry asked.

"Well, yeah, but his _surname's_-"

"Welcome!" said the headmaster, who Harry remembered from his letters was called Albus Dumbledore, Grand Sorc. and so on. "Welcome one and all! And before we begin our meal, I would like to say a few words."

He cleared his throat. "A Few Words. Thank you."

Harry snorted, then noticed that the plates were suddenly full of all kinds of food.

(Well, that wasn't quite correct. But it was all kinds of human food, and Harry understood they wouldn't vary their menu just for one student if that one student could still eat all the regular food.)

After a very long day of nothing but two sandwiches and some sweets, Harry was quite happy to pile all kind of everything on his plate – mostly roast meat and vegetables, though not exclusively – and dig in.

"My goodness," said the ghost next to Harry, watching as he ate a chicken leg. "I didn't know that was possible."

"What?" Harry asked, then looked down at the remains of the chicken leg – which he'd bitten off cleanly about halfway up, bone and all. "Oh, yeah… the bone's just a bit chewy, that's all."

"For most of us it's a lot more than a bit chewy," Dean said, swallowing his peas. "I think I'd break my teeth if I tried to do that!"

"It's very impressive to watch, actually," the older Weasley boy said. "I wonder what Charlie would think – most dragons don't mind making a mess of what they eat, of course, but you're much more tidy."

"Aunt Petunia would blame me if I dropped anything on the tablecloth," Harry explained. "Besides, manners are fairly easy if you learn them."

"It took me a while," Ron admitted, keeping his elbows clear of the table. "But Mum would give me a real telling-off if I made a mistake."

"Of course she did, Ronald," his brother said. "And rightly so as well."

"Percy," Ron groaned. "Not now?"

Harry looked a little wistfully at their interaction, wondering what it would be like if Dudley was okay with him all the time instead of just when he needed something, and took another bite of roast potatoes.

There was a faint _clang_.

"...oops," Harry blushed. "I haven't done that for years..."

Everyone within four places stared as Harry pulled the remains of his fork out of his mouth and put it down. It still had the flare, but all four tines had vanished completely.

"Is there something I should do to tell someone?" he asked. "Sorry about that, it was just really tasty..."

Percy took his wand out of his pocket and tapped the fork, and it regrew the tines in a trice.

"...okay, _that_ was cool," Dean pronounced. "What was that?"

"Just a simple transfiguration," Percy said, but Harry could tell he was pleased. "There are restrictions on what transfiguration can do, such as that it can't create food, but-"

"Wait, hold on," Harry asked. "It can't create food?"

He pointed at the fork. "If that's made of metal, I could eat it. Does that mean it can create food for me?"

"No, that's different," Percy told him. "The First Exception to Gamp's Law is that you can't turn something that _isn't_ food into food. What I did there was to increase the amount of what was already there."

He frowned. "Though, now I come to think of it, maybe you _could _transfigure something you can't eat into something you can eat. What _can't_ you eat?"

Harry had to think long and hard.

"Um… I actually can't think of anything?" he admitted. "I haven't tried _everything_, but everything I've tried has been pretty edible."

"That's remarkable," Percy said. "But it does mean you could probably consider the First Exception irrelevant… unless you _do_ find something you can't eat, and you can turn it into metal or something."

Harry shrugged, then picked up a pot pie and ate it.

"...that was in a china dish," Dean pointed out. "I'm kind of afraid you'll eat your books one day, mate."

The dragon shook his head firmly. "No, I… it's kind of hard to describe, I just think of them as… mine, I think?"

"I think I'll let the House-Elves know to prepare extra dishes for the Gryffindor table," Percy said.

"Oh, there are House-Elves at Hogwarts?" Hermione asked, revealing herself to be a bit further down than Percy. "They're not mentioned in _Hogwarts: A History_, but I saw mention of legislation to improve their rights in _Modern Magical History_."

"That's right, it's how such a large castle with so many students is taken care of," Percy explained.

Harry listened with half an ear to the conversation, but mostly just concentrated on eating – this time trying to confine himself to things that were actually _meant_ to be eaten.

* * *

Over the course of the next hour or so, everyone ate their fill – then the main meals were exchanged for desserts, in a variety as great (or greater) than the main courses.

Fortunately, so many of the Gryffindors had already asked Harry the Five Obvious Questions on the train that the conversation over the dessert started some way after that. Harry got asked about his home life, and he did his best to explain how he got on with his family.

"For the last month or so I was living in the loft," he said. "And… honestly, I think that kind of worked out best."

"But surely your aunt and uncle would want to see you?" a third-year girl asked. "And how you were doing?"

"Not really," Harry replied, with a shrug. One of his wings went through Sir Nicholas, which felt oddly chilling, and he furled it again before continuing. "I… kind of think they knew I was magic before I knew it – except for the dragon thing – and they didn't really like it. But they're not _too_ bad."

He inspected a jam doughnut, biting into it, then swallowed and went on. "I just try to stay out of the way as much as possible, and when I come down for meals I cook them – that way it's easier to eat the packaging."

That drew a few stares, and Dean laughed.

"I really hope I don't get used to how you eat stuff, mate," he said. "It's great every time."

That drew attention to him, and he shrugged. "For me, well… I don't know what happened to my birth dad, but my new dad treats me just like one of his kids. Mum actually thinks my birth dad might have been a wizard, now, 'cause that would explain where I came from."

"That's actually quite plausible," Percy informed him. "You were born a year or two before Harry ended the last war."

"That makes it sound like I had anything to do with it," Harry winced. "I don't know what happened."

"So you grew up in an all-Muggle household?" Seamus Finnegan asked. "Mine was half and half, so I never really had trouble adjusting to magic and stuff."

Dean nodded, and pointed at Harry. "He grew up in a Muggle household too, don't forget."

"So did I, obviously," Hermione said. "All these differences really are fascinating. It must be so helpful to grow up around magic and absorb all these spells as they're being used."

"Well… you don't, really?" Ron tried. "It's just… mum cleaning the kitchen, or dad fixing the chair. That's all it is, really."

"He's got a point," Dean nodded. "Not like I know how the plumbing works just 'cause I've seen mum doing the washing up."

"I don't know, I think _Harry_ might know how the plumbing works," the third-year girl said.

"I know how to _use_ it, that's not the same thing," Harry replied. "But if you want to know how to fly in a rainstorm, I'm your dragon."

He rubbed his head, remembering a long-ago crash. "The important thing is to listen for when you're about to reach the ground..."

"Hey, hold on a moment," the third-year girl asked. "You taught yourself to fly?"

She blinked. "Well, I suppose you must have done. That's really impressive… I'd better let Wood know we might have some up and coming talent for next year."

"Oh, hold on, I know you," Ron realized. "Fred, George and Charlie talked about you. You're… Angelina, right?"

Angelina nodded in confirmation. "Yeah. Didn't know they talked about me at home though..."

"There's only seven players in a Quidditch team, everyone gets talked about," Seamus pointed out.

"So what _are_ the rules of this thing?" Dean said. "It sounds mad."

That led the discussion off into Quidditch, which did indeed sound quite baffling. Harry wasn't sure it sounded at all safe for people who _weren't_ dragons, and the fact you couldn't tell how long a game was even going to last was completely bizarre.

It gave him a mental image of teachers in the stands shouting lectures at the teams, still playing well into the second week.

* * *

As talk of the rules shifted into talk of the teams (Ron apparently being a fan of a real no-hoper team, while Neville admitted to just vaguely supporting whoever sounded like they had a chance that year), Harry looked back up at the table – counting teachers.

"How many classes are there?" he asked Percy, who seemed disinterested in the sports talk.

"Oh, well, for you first-years there's seven," Percy informed him. "Astronomy, Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts and History of Magic. There's also flying lessons in the first term."

Harry nodded as Percy pointed out each of the teachers. The sallow man turned out to be the Potions teacher, Professor Snape, and Professor McGonagall was Transfiguration.

"Then starting in third year you take at least two of five extra classes," Percy went on. "Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy and Muggle Studies. Professor Kettleburn is Creatures, Ancient Runes is Professor Babbling, Arithmancy is Professor Vector, and Professor Burbage is Muggle Studies."

"Where's the Divination teacher?" Harry asked. "And do you do that subject?"

"I do _all_ the subjects," Percy told Harry, sounding very pleased with himself – and Harry could understand why.

"So what's Divination like?" the dragon went on. "Is it about reading ancient codexes and trying to piece together concordances?"

"Not… really," Percy replied. "To be honest, the teacher isn't always the clearest on the subject. She spends all her time up in her tower."

Harry counted back and forth again, feeling another of those faint tingles warning of a potential headache. Hagrid obviously didn't teach a subject, and the Divination teacher wasn't here… that was the flying teacher, so...

"So what does the headmaster teach?"

"Well, some years he teaches Alchemy, if there's enough interest in it for the sixth-years," Percy said. "But he simply doesn't have the time to teach, normally – he's a very busy man."

Harry nodded, finding that a bit odd but maybe it was just normal here.

"This is my O.W.L year," Percy added. "So I'm quite anxious about Professor Quirrell's subject move. It's always a gamble for Defence."

At Harry's head-tilted look, Percy elaborated. "Defence teachers change every year. It's said that He Who Must Not Be Named cursed the position, and by now it's looking quite true. It's a pity, really, but Professor Quirrell was quite good in Muggle Studies two years ago so I hope we have a good education this year at least."

Harry wasn't sure how to take that.

"So… what's the best class?" he asked. "Of the first year ones, I mean."

"Well, I've always been quite partial to Potions, but nobody else in Gryffindor agrees with me," Percy sighed.

"That's because Professor Snape hates Gryffindor," Angelina interrupted. "You can tell because he takes points off for made-up reasons."

She winked at Harry. "Don't worry, most of the classes are pretty cool. Not History of Magic, though."

Harry looked back up at the table. "That's the one taught by a ghost?"

"Ah, sadly Binns is not such a well-animated ghost as myself," Sir Nicholas sighed. "He may not have noticed that he passed away."

That was such an odd thing to hear, even for the kind of day Harry had had, that he decided to just have one last chocolate eclair instead.

* * *

With the meal over, Professor Dumbledore gave a short speech. Harry was a bit disappointed to find that a whole area not far from the castle was forbidden to students – it would mean that he couldn't actually go out there to visit – but then again there was a lot of other space around to stretch his wings, and if he hadn't been noticed in years of flying around southern England then he'd probably get away with it up here in what had to be northern Scotland.

There was a mention that it wasn't allowed to do magic in the corridors between classes, which made sense, and one about Quidditch trials which had most of the table commenting excitedly. Apparently Gryffindor was down two players – it'd be three except for a reserve player who would now step up to the main squad – so it was a matter of considerable importance, though Harry was still trying to puzzle out how it could be fair.

There was a codicil about how, yes, there was an incoming student who was a dragon, and that Professor Dumbledore hoped that nobody would hold his little physical peculiarity against him or make too much of a fuss about it. The young dragon in question wasn't at all sure that it would work, but the effort was nice.

Finally, there was something about how there was a corridor which was out of bounds on pain of death.

"...what?" Harry asked. "Really? Why?"

"I couldn't say," Sir Nicholas replied. "Though I do think I might take a look at some time – death holds no fear for those who have already departed, I might say."

Then Dumbledore mentioned a school song, and Harry's ears perked up – though, fortunately, slowly enough that his glasses didn't go flying off this time.

His mind spun with thoughts of the Harper Hall, of the poetry of Arda and of the music of Valdemar, and his tail flicked from side to side eagerly as Dumbledore conjured the words out of thin air.

Then the Headmaster told them all to pick a tune.

* * *

Several minutes later, Harry finally took his paws off his ears.

"What _was_ that?" he asked, weakly. "That – that's not music..."

"Well, it's how the school song's always been," Percy replied, then stood up. "First years, follow me please-"

"I was expecting a proper beat to it," Harry went on, still trying to get his head around what had just happened. "Or a tune, maybe?"

Shaking his head and wondering if maybe he could write one, Harry followed the rest of the first-years up the steps. The castle's layout seemed awfully confusing, with the staircases moving the way they did, and then they got into Gryffindor Tower by way of a portrait who asked for a password.

"Are they all like that?" Harry asked, trying to ignore the password – Caput Draconis sounded unpleasant, though he was sure they hadn't planned it.

"Oh, heavens no," the portrait replied. "Not all houses trust a portrait."

"Sorry, I should really ask your name," Harry added. "I'm not really used to portraits being alive yet."

"Well, aren't you the surprise!" she smiled, as Harry walked around the side a little – moving so he could still see her, as the other tired first-years filed through the doorway behind her. "A dragon, and so well-mannered as well. Alas, I fear that I must guard my identity, and so you have my permission to refer to me as all do – as the Fat Lady of Gryffindor."

Seeing Harry's surprise, she laughed. "Dear me, don't you know that to be plump was a compliment for centuries? It entertains me so to hear everyone calling me beautiful."

Harry nodded in understanding, then walked over to check something. Sure enough, despite the complex route they'd taken to get here, they were at the top of the Grand Staircase – and it had a large enough open space that Harry felt confident of being able to fly up or down and save quite a lot of time.

* * *

The dorm rooms for the first year boys were up several flights of spiral stairs, and when Harry belatedly got up there the others had already changed into their pyjamas. Not having the same chore, Harry spent a few minutes checking on his things – everything was in his trunk, though Hedwig's cage was empty and she was presumably being sorted out – before getting a couple of dozen letters out and piling them on his bed.

"What's that for?" Dean asked, sounding sleepy, as Harry disrobed.

"It kind of… helps me sleep," Harry replied, unsure how to really put it. "I _think_ it's a dragon thing? Not sure, though."

Actually getting into bed was a bit of a puzzler, though. Unlike his robes he couldn't really avoid coming into contact with the bed linen with his talons, and he sort of stared at it thinking for several more minutes.

"Wassat?" Ron mumbled. "Not… ergh… not slept in a bed before?"

"...funnily enough, no," Harry admitted. "Maybe it'll work out. Your brother fixed something, maybe they can fix any holes I make..."

Ron's yawn reminded Harry how long the day had been, and he crawled into bed himself before sort of curling up. The sheets stuck to a few places on his wings and paws, but Harry comforted himself with the thought that if he _did_ damage the bed he could at least use the same one all year.

Or, failing that, see if this tower had an attic.

* * *

AN:

* * *

I did consider what House to put Harry in, but ultimately the fact remains that while he's a lot more of a book-reader than in canon it's still not enough to put him in Ravenclaw.


	7. But How Do You Actually Magic

Used to short nights and not much sleep, Harry awoke at seven the next morning feeling more rested than usual.

He'd moved around enough in the night that the sheets were badly damaged, but consoled himself with the thoughts he'd had last night and shook himself out. The other four boys were still asleep, so he got himself dressed in his robes (which took a bit less time than it had the previous day) and contemplated his school books.

Without any idea of his schedule for the day, he couldn't just carry them all around in his ex-Dursley backpack – though the more correct term was probably _frontpack_ given where he usually slung it – and so he decided to just take his wand to breakfast, and come back up to the tower once he knew what he was after for the day.

Snagging _Seeress_ from his trunk and holding it against his side with one of his wings, he loped down the flights of steps to reach the common room. There were only a few people here this early in the morning, and Harry said hello – meeting someone called Cormac who didn't sound very awake – then made his way out of the portrait hole and jumped down the grand staircase.

Someone on the fifth floor shouted in surprise, and Harry spread his wings to slow his fall – resulting in a great crackling _whoom_ of air, and also resulting in his book dropping out of his grip until he somewhat belatedly caught it with his forepaws. Then he beat his wings twice, blowing a storm of air around as he slowed and landed.

A couple of students who were near the bottom of the staircase clapped, and Harry blushed slightly – ears folding down a little in embarrassment and a hint of pride. Stowing his book under his wing again, he made his way to breakfast.

* * *

Breakfast turned out to mostly be much more conventional than the feast had been. There was toast, sausages, baked beans and scrambled egg, among other things, and Harry took some sausages and toast before settling down to read. One wing sufficed to hold the book in place, and he could turn the pages with one forepaw while eating with the other.

This time he managed to retain enough focus to not bite the end of his fork off, and he was still reading when Dean stumbled down to eat half an hour later.

"Any idea how we get our schedules?" the black boy asked, then looked up as Professor McGonagall came over.

"Mr. Thomas, good morning," she said, and handed him a piece of paper with his class schedule. "For the first year, all Gryffindor first years will have the same schedule, but please keep a hold of this."

She gave one to Harry as well, who scanned it and found that their first lesson was Charms. It gave a classroom number as well, which made Harry stare – how could they need more than thirty classrooms with only about a dozen teachers in the entire school?

To his surprise, there were free periods dotted around the timetable, and some of the classes were stacked to make double or triple periods. There were several free periods on Wednesday morning, for example, but that was because Astronomy was at midnight the night before.

It also looked like most of the classes were joint with another House, which made sense.

Ron joined them ten minutes after Dean, but the first thing he did was ask Harry if he could borrow Harry's owl.

Reminded by that of something else he was planning to do, Harry nodded. He took the letter Ron had written, put it in his pocket along with his book and schedule, then headed out the main doors.

* * *

The grounds outside the castle were beautiful in the September sunlight just coming over the mountains, and Harry crouched for a long moment before exploding into the air – gaining height rapidly and soaring over the slope leading down to the great lake he'd flown over the previous evening. The Forbidden Forest hulked not too far off, dark and menacing, and Harry examined it carefully – wondering what hid within – before spiralling around to gain height and rise up towards the top of Hogwarts.

He'd been expecting to have a little trouble locating his target, but it turned out to be very easy. As he passed the highest level of the main building and reached the height at which there were only towers, a white shape came flying out to join him and barked something.

"Morning, Hedwig!" Harry called, smiling. "I've got a letter one of my friends wants to send, but I'm not sure where it's going… do you mind if I ask you to send it?"

Hedwig flew over and landed on his head, then nibbled his ear.

Taking that as it _probably_ being okay, Harry slid sideways a bit before alighting on the roof a little outside the Owlery. Removing the letter from his robes, he offered it to Hedwig, and she looked briefly at the address before taking it in her beak.

"Good luck!" Harry told her, and she touched his paw with her wing before taking off and flying south.

* * *

With almost an hour before his class, still, Harry was tempted to fly down and visit Hagrid – but after remembering how complicated it was to get around inside Hogwarts he reluctantly declined, deciding instead to go up and snag his books before finding his first lesson.

He was already wondering whether he could get his robes adjusted to have bigger pockets, or maybe whether it was possible to make pockets that were bigger on the inside. If he could, he wouldn't need the backpack to carry his things around for the times there were two classes in a row.

Best of all would be a Luggage, but he wasn't sure Hogwarts would survive dozens of Luggages running back and forth.

When he actually got back to his dorm room, however, Harry realized that there wasn't exactly a clear indication of which books he'd need for Charms. History of Magic and Herbology were obvious enough, perhaps, and he could make a guess at Potions (while Astronomy didn't seem to need any at all) but most of the books about magic could be for Defence, Charms or Transfiguration – except for the Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration, of course.

Harry eventually shrugged and decided to take both the spellbook and the magical theory book, and set off to find Charms class.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, Harry had gone up fourteen flights of steps, down seventeen, found Neville, found Hermione, properly met Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, run into Professor Quirrell, asked four portraits for directions and been the subject of a very determined haunting by Lord Ridley. He'd also finally found the Charms classroom, which was already occupied by several Ravenclaws.

He couldn't help but feel as though it would be easier if Hogwarts was a bit less massive and imposing and a bit more… flat.

* * *

Sir Nicholas led Ron, Dean and Sally-Anne in just a minute or so before the stroke of nine, and Harry waited with interest to see what the lesson would be like. All the books he thought might be relevant were lined up at the head of his desk, and he'd pushed the chair out of the way so he could lean with one forepaw and use the other to write with.

The teacher – Professor Flitwick, if he remembered correctly – was nowhere in sight, and at first Harry wondered if they'd all got the wrong room by mistake. He wouldn't put it past the confusing castle to have wrong numbers on the doors sometimes, but then someone gasped.

Some books were floating up from behind the teacher's desk into the air. They all looked different, with titles like _Charming Wizards From The Past_ and _Spells for the Household_, and Harry tensed – getting ready to jump out and catch one of the books, if that was what they were going to be doing today.

The books spun in midair, however, then began to all drop down behind the desk. Or at least the first few did – later volumes landed on top of the first ones, forming a pillar of books atop the teacher's chair behind the desk.

One final volume, _The Flying Book Of Flight_, rose above the level of the desk with the tiny little Professor Flitwick atop it. His wand was waving as he directed the books to their landing places, with the one he was riding coming down last, and it was only once the last one had landed that he looked out at the class.

Then he gave a little gasp and fell off his newly built tower.

"...what was that all about?" Seamus asked, looking around to see if anyone had an answer for him.

"Oh, my – goodness," Professor Flitwick said from behind the desk, and one of the books floated back down so he could ride it up again. Once there he pulled a small scroll from the pockets of his robes as he floated up, and unrolled it. "Well, I can see Mr. Potter is here, but is Mr. Boot?"

Terry Boot raised his hand. "Here, Professor."

"Good, good… Miss Brocklehurst?"

* * *

After the attendance roll had been taken, Professor Flitwick moved on to the actual lesson.

He started by asking if anyone knew what Charms was, and jumped around the classroom getting half-a-dozen answers before he told them all the real definition. Charms were spells which _added_ properties to an object or creature (such as the Hover Charm he had performed on his books), or which had an instant effect not related to transfiguration (such as summoning).

From there the Professor moved on to some of the basic concepts behind magic, and about how spells were cast. Spells could be cast with nothing but a wave of the hand and an effort of will, but it was made much easier by a wand and also much easier by saying the words associated with the spell – which interested Harry, as even when Professor Flitwick went into more detail it sounded a lot like how things were done in the _Belgariad_ books. Belgarath would only carry around a staff to make himself look impressive, but it was enough to make him wonder if the author was secretly magical.

After about a page of note-taking, Professor Flitwick told them they were going to be doing the _fun_ stuff. That meant getting their wands out and waving them around, sending coloured sparks of all sorts bouncing off the walls (though Ron and Neville both had a bit of trouble in making anything as fiery as the rest), and then trying to learn their very first spell – _Lumos_, which was simple enough and just made the ends of their wands light up.

Harry was very pleased with himself that he got it working, though he wasn't the first – about half the class had beaten him to it. But it didn't matter, because he'd done some actual, intentional magic.

Their homework was to write about ways to use the charms in the first chapter of their spellbooks, and Ron and Neville – both of whom hadn't quite managed to get the charm working properly – were also told to get it finished.

It had been quite an enjoyable lesson, which Harry took as a good omen (though he did wonder why the homework was assigned by _parchment length_) and he headed off to change books for the next lesson in high spirits.

* * *

"Hey, Ron," Harry said, poking his friend with his tail. "Ron. Wake up."

"Huh?" Ron asked, yawning. "W-wha?"

He looked around, seeing they were in a classroom with about two dozen other drowsing students, then over at Harry.

"You fell asleep during the lesson," Harry explained, putting away his notes. "I did my best to try and keep you awake, but it kept distracting me."

"Wait – mate, you _didn't_ fall asleep during that?" Ron asked, rubbing his eyes as Harry turned his attention to trying to wake up Dean. "How'd you manage that?

"It wasn't really _that_ bad," Harry shrugged.

"It was!" Ron insisted. "I've heard stories from the twins about it – heck, even _Percy_ said he had trouble staying awake in History of Magic sometimes!"

"Huh," Harry frowned, having successfully woken Dean up. The other boy didn't even bother complaining, just picking up what notes he'd managed to make and packing them in his bag. "I mean, it was a bit dry, but it wasn't as bad as the _Silmarillion."_

"What's that, a fruit?" Neville asked, but of their little group even Hermione looked surprised.

"You actually read through the _Silmarillion_?" the witch blinked, tilting her head slightly in a way Harry recognized as one of his own mannerisms. "Why?"

"There's dragons in it," Harry answered, since that made it obvious to _him_. "Really powerful ones, too, though not very nice."

"Charlie's told me some stories of how hard dragons are to stop," Ron volunteered, as they began to file out of the room to head down to lunch. "How much worse than that could it be?"

* * *

By the time Harry had finished telling them, Ron seemed quite surprised.

"...destroyed a mountain range?" he repeated. "By _crashing?_"

"Yeah, though he was the biggest," Harry explained, choosing a place and sitting down. A second fork appeared next to his first, and he blinked in surprise before putting it to the side.

While the feast the previous evening had been spectacular and breakfast had been fairly conventional – aside from the lack of cornflakes – it transpired that lunch involved a few normal things and a few things only Wizards (or Witches) could think up. Pumpkin Pasties and Chocolate Croquettes sat alongside robust ham-and-cheese sandwiches and pot pies, and Harry found plenty to satisfy him.

"A _mountain range_," Ron said, shaking his head, then seemed to decide it would be better to eat lunch now and wonder about Muggle ideas of dragons later.

"What's next after this?" Dean asked, halfway through one of the croquettes.

"Herbology," Neville told them. "That's after lunch, then I think it's Transfiguration straight after that."

"Oh, great..." Ron groaned. "That means we have to carry both sets of books, and Transfiguration's got loads."

Harry had to admit it didn't exactly sound ideal either, but they'd have to get used to carrying all those books sooner or later.

* * *

Herbology, well… Harry wasn't quite sure what to make of Herbology, yet.

It was sort of like gardening, which Harry definitely had experience with, but it was also a kind of gardening where there wasn't much pruning (a problem for a dragon who had become used to the odd snack as he did the gardening) and a lot of the plants were quite odd. Oh, plenty of the herbs and fungi which had magical uses were ones that were at least known to Muggles – like mint, which Neville told him had magical properties if mixed right, or nettles – but others like Bubotubers looked very strange indeed.

As was the case with Charms, the first lesson was largely about introducing them to the concepts involved, and Professor Sprout also took pains to make sure they were aware of all the dangers involved. Greenhouses One and Two didn't have any lethal plants, but a few of them were quite unpleasant or could sting, so it was gloves whenever they got near them.

"What are those?" asked one of the Hufflepuff boys – Harry thought he was called Justin – as Harry used one of the trowels to unpot a nettle.

"You mean my gloves?" Harry replied, shifting the plant to a new pot and then packing some mulch around it. "Yeah, Hagrid helped me get them."

"That really big man who met us at the train?" Probably Justin checked, and Harry nodded in confirmation. "Why not just – oh."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It made me kind of uncomfortable… I mean, these aren't exactly dangerous to me, but I know some stuff might be."

He carefully touched one of the nettles just below his rolled-up sleeve to demonstrate, and Probably Justin blinked.

"That's pretty impressive."

"Mr. Potter?" Professor Sprout called, hastening over. "While I appreciate that your unique circumstances mean that you have less to fear, less does not mean none! Please don't take chances like that in future."

"Sorry," Harry replied, chastened. "I'm still getting used to the idea of magical plants."

As Professor Sprout left, Justin gave Harry an odd look.

"Surely you should be used to magical plants?" he said. "You're _clearly_ not Muggle-Born."

"No, but I got raised Muggle," Harry explained. "There's the same kind of magic there is on the Leaky Cauldron at the top of Diagon Alley… I think. Nobody ever notices unless they're magical."

Justin nodded, then snorted.

"I was just imagining how it would have gone if we had ended up going to the same _non_ magical school," he explained. "First day at Eton, there's a dragon standing in assembly and nobody else seems to notice."

* * *

Herbology was only an hour long (though it was three times a week to make up for that, and at different times of the day because some plants were only active in the evening) and straight after that Harry barely had time to brush off his gloves and put them back in his bag before it was off to Transfiguration.

Professor McGonagall's started the class by revealing herself to have been the cat standing on the desk at the front, and Harry stared for a long moment before raising his forepaw. The Professor went through her warning about how dangerous the class was before calling on him, and Harry took a moment to decide just _which_ question to start with.

"Is that something that all wizards and witches can do?" he asked.

"Not exactly, Mr. Potter," she answered. "It is a very rare skill, though almost anyone could learn it if they put in sufficient effort and had the dedication to see it through … dedication which is extremely rare. A few witches or wizards however have abilities which prevent it, such as being a Metamorphagus."

Harry still had his forepaw up, and after taking a few questions from the rest of the class Professor McGonagall called on him again.

"Can you turn into any animal?" he asked then, thinking of Poledra's wolf-form and owl-form – or more correctly her human-form and owl-form, as she'd been born a wolf.

"Not at all, Mr. Potter," she told him, though she sounded pleased with his questions. "An Animagus can turn into only one animal, which is an animal version of themselves; it is not known exactly what determines what animal someone gets, though it always shares some identifying mark with them or their personal image."

A couple more questions followed, then they were into the really substantive bit of the lesson. That turned out to mean more note-taking, an explanation of the fundamental philosophy of transfiguration (which was that 'free' transfiguration could turn anything into anything, subject to the Five Exceptions, but was very difficult, and that transfiguration working with specific spells was easier to learn and to perform) and then moving on to turning a matchstick into a needle.

The idea, as Professor McGonagall explained it, was that by learning enough spelled transfigurations one would become more adept at performing other spelled transfigurations without needing so much learning time – or even eventually make one able to progress to free transfiguration.

Of course, it was harder than that made it sound, and by the end of the class only Hermione had managed to do more than make the matchstick perhaps a bit thinner.

Apparently it was all about visualization.

* * *

Between the end of Transfiguration and dinner about half the First-Years gravitated to the library, which was when Harry spent an hour or so writing about ways to use charms – doing his best to come up with interesting if impractical ones to go with the obvious, such as using Lumos to send signals or the Hover charm to lift up a chair one was sitting on – before putting his quill down and deciding to have a proper look at what Hogwarts library held.

It was a dry, dusty place with shelves creaking with books, some of them hundreds of years old and written in that funny font where an s looked like an f. In fact, quite a lot of the books were very old, but Harry supposed that that had to make sense if there weren't many wizards, as that would mean it'd take a long time for wizards to write enough different books to be worthwhile. Anything that might be relevant to a main course class had at least three copies, some of them checked out already, but annoyingly there wasn't a fiction section in sight.

Resigning himself to doing a lot of rereading – and wondering if he could perhaps contrive to convert some more of his galleons to pounds and fly into a Muggle town to stock up – Harry instead took mental note of where the section on magical creatures was, which also led to the realization that a lot of the books stored in that section were travelogues of long journeys up rivers into dark rainforests.

"Well… maybe," he mused.

It sort of counted.

* * *

That evening, Harry flew down to say hello to Hagrid. The big man seemed a bit out of sorts, his heavy coat scored with new marks and lines, but he waved it off as being the result of a creature in the Forbidden Forest being 'feisty' and welcomed Harry in.

"So, how's your first day been so far?" Hagrid asked. "Hope you're getting on all right."

"It's been great," Harry assured him. "I'm not really used to this kind of school, and that makes it kind of weird, but the magic stuff's all interesting so far."

He glanced back up at the castle. "Though I think I'm going to get lost at some point..."

"Ah, well, you don't have the same problem some have," Hagrid noted. "If you're worried about getting lost, just learn the way back from the front door to your dorm – and if you ever don't know where you are in the castle, jump out a window and sort it that way."

He gave Harry a rock cake to try, which was crunchy and interesting, and asked him how things had gone with his relatives (fairly well) and how everyone was finding it that he was a dragon.

"I think everyone's trying to ignore it, actually," Harry confided. "I get looked at, especially when I use a wing to keep my place or something, but it's not too bad."

"Good, good," Hagrid nodded. "Sometimes kids can be interested in what's different."

He flashed Harry a smile. "I never stopped bein' interested."

Harry chuckled as well.

"Is it allowed to go and visit a nearby Muggle town?" he asked. "Not straight away, that is. But I think I might run out of books, and..."

"Hmm… don't know that, actually," Hagrid admitted. "Don't think there's been any call for it. We're a way away from anywhere Muggle, and o' course most students don't have a way to get there without risking being discovered. But you're different, and… I'll ask Professor Dumbledore."

"Thanks," Harry smiled.

He looked under the table, which was where Hagrid's big dog Fang was hiding. "Do you think he's coming out?"

"Not likely," Hagrid judged. "Fang's bark's worse than his bite, and 'e thinks you're worse than his bark."

* * *

Tuesday brought a new lesson, Defence Against the Dark Arts, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Professor Quirrell had a dreadful stutter, and his classroom had a strong smell of garlic which gave Harry a bit of a vague headache throughout the class.

He did his best to concentrate in spite of that, as the Professor ran through the difference between a Jinx, a Hex and a Curse, as well as a few other spells which were technically Charms or Transfiguration but fell into the category of defensive spell. The differences didn't really seem to be all that consistent, but Harry supposed he'd learn at some point.

They were also told the reason why there was such a variety of spells to deal with the subject. There was something of a trade-off between ease of casting, how much a spell tired the caster out, and how effective it actually was on the target – as well as how easy it was to reverse, for that matter – and Professor Quirrell made sure to point out that dragons were just one of several kinds of magical creature which were highly resistant to magic.

Harry should really test that out at some point.

Oddly enough, though, once the class was over and Harry looked over his notes, they seemed fairly clear – he could see where it had all come from and where it was going – but the stutter just made it upwind work to treat the class seriously while it was going on. (Harry had heard of 'uphill work' and decided a dragon should rephrase it slightly.) Maybe it would go better once they moved on to practical work, though Harry was fairly sure fire breath wasn't allowed.

Though, if he _was_ magic resistant, could he use his wings to block spells or something? Or just take off and fly around, because moving things were harder to hit – and if his eyes were the only place that wasn't covered by magic-resistant scales, then moving fast would make it even harder to hit his eyes.

* * *

The penultimate regular class that Harry was introduced to was Astronomy, which began at the stroke of midnight as Tuesday became Wednesday.

Owing to issues with the lack of week nights available, Astronomy took place with the whole year at once. This gave Professor Sinistra perhaps the largest single class in the school, but she seemed quite up to the challenge – explaining clearly what they would be doing tonight and for the rest of the year. They would be using their telescopes to examine the moon, to look at the planets and their moons, to view the constellations and to plot out when they intersected.

Someone from Ravenclaw raised his hand to ask if that meant it was like Astrology, and Professor Sinistra told him quite sharply that it was not – that was a matter for Divination, which was a third-year elective. Astronomy was concerned with facts, with the here and now, and only with those parts of the future which concerned the predictable movements of the planets and other celestial bodies.

The practical upshot of this was that the somewhat-tired students were taught how to use a telescope, as well as the basics of navigating the night sky. It would change, week by week, and the sky would get darker towards the end of the year before lightening again, but with a sufficiently good telescope and enough training it would be possible to locate the stars and the planets even during the twilight pseudo-night of the Scottish summer.

While it was interesting enough, Harry was curious, and when the class proper was over he approached Professor Sinistra as the other students were packing up.

When asked _why_ it was that students were taught Astronomy as a compulsory subject, the Astronomy teacher looked at first a little offended.

"Well – why not?" she asked him. "Surely you don't find the class boring?"

"I don't, it's interesting to learn about," Harry replied. "And I can use it to navigate by the stars, if I ever go flying at night – or I hope I'll be able to, at least. I'm just curious why everyone does it."

"Astronomy is used in Potions," Professor Sinistra said then. "And in Alchemy. There are ingredients of both which rely on the lunar cycle – as do some magical beasts."

"Like Werewolves," Harry agreed, remembering that part of the _Fantastic Beasts_ book. "And Mooncalves. But I… suppose I don't see why it takes five years of study."

Professor Sinistra looked around. "Mr. Potter, you're curious, and I think that's admirable. So I believe I'll now tell you why _I_ believe it is that my class is core studies, and not an elective like Muggle Studies or Divination."

Harry sat down, doing his best to look trustworthy and admirable.

"Professor Dumbledore likes astronomy, and we have an Astronomy Tower."

After a long pause, Harry blinked. "That's… it?"

"That, as you say, is it," Professor Sinistra told him. "I suspect it is the same reason why we have a Divination class, or why there are clubs for both chamber music and tenpin bowling."

* * *

After the end of Astronomy, the various First-Years had to make their way back through the upper reaches of the castle – yawning and tired – to get their sleep. There were no classes until quite late in the morning on Wednesday, to compensate, but it was still a pity for the Slytherin and Hufflepuff students who had to make their way down at least fourteen flights of stairs to reach their dorms.

Harry had to go back up to the Astronomy tower after being the last to leave – having managed to mislay his telescope, which was awkward for him to carry – and several twists and turns later on the way down from the tower he found himself unsure whether he'd ended up in the right place.

Looking suspiciously around, and not quite sure if he'd got himself turned around or not, Harry peered down one corridor. Everyone else had gone, he was up after what would normally be Curfew were it not for Astronomy class, and if the cratchity caretaker caught him he was fairly sure he wouldn't take 'Astronomy' as an excuse.

"Good lord," said a doorknocker. "Are you a dragon?"

"Yes?" Harry replied. "I'm fairly sure I have everything you need to be one."

"Wait," the doorknocker said suddenly. "I didn't – oh bother."

The door behind it opened, swinging to the side and revealing an empty room full of armchairs.

After due consideration, Harry decided he should go in to what was presumably Ravenclaw common room. If there was a Prefect here he could tell them he was lost, and get back to Gryffindor Tower that way, and if not then he could… well, do something or other.

Five minutes later, he found the library.

* * *

Eventually, Harry woke up on Wednesday morning.

He yawned, shifting a bit, and a couple of books clattered to the floor. That prompted him to wake up the rest of the way, and he blinked before looking around.

He was in that library he'd found the previous night, surrounded by books that had looked interesting – a few of them half-finished, open to where he'd switched to look something else up or spotted a better choice.

As he shifted, there was a quiet chirp from a foot or two away. Harry looked, and Hedwig was sitting serenely on his telescope – as if that was where she'd been meant to be all along.

Harry yawned, and a second or two later a Prefect peered in through the library door. She seemed pleased to notice he was up, and waved her wand, and suddenly a hubbub of conversation could be heard through the door.

"Good morning," she said – Harry was fairly sure she was the one who he'd seen on the train. "I assume you got lost last night?"

"Yeah, on the way back from Astronomy," Harry agreed, stretching his wings out. "I'm sorry I made a bit of a mess."

He looked around. "It's just… you have _novels_ in here. I'd thought there weren't any in the castle except my own collection!"

"Are you _quite sure_ you're a Lion?" the Prefect asked. "That sounds much more like what an Eagle would say."

Harry looked politely confused about the terms, and the Prefect explained how Slytherins were Snakes, Hufflepuffs were Badgers and so on.

"Tempus," she added, and a string of numbers appeared in the air before she waved them away. "If I've got your class schedule right, you have History of Magic in half an hour."

"That's right!" Harry realized. "Why didn't someone wake me?"

"It's the school motto," the Prefect told him, which was fair enough.

* * *

Ten minutes after that, Hedwig had flown out the window, and Harry was out of Ravenclaw tower feeling quite pleased about how the night had gone.

It might have been the result of a total accident, but while a few of the Ravens had been leery of him most had apparently decided that a dragon who curled up on a pile of books for the night was perfectly acceptable.

He had the vague feeling that they might have adopted him.

Then it was across to Gryffindor, lope up the stairs, exchange Astronomy equipment for History textbooks, and jump down several floors of the staircase with sweeping wingbeats to reach History of Magic in time.

In a way, Harry was starting to see the appeal of such an oddly laid out school. It _did_ make getting to lessons a lot more interesting.

* * *

A few questions once Harry had finished eating lunch that day established that there was nothing strictly _preventing_ Harry from going into Ravenclaw Library again. Professor Flitwick seemed quite entertained by the idea, though he did ask Harry to please make sure he didn't fall asleep there again as it made the actual Ravenclaws uncomfortable using the library, and even gave him permission to take one or two books out of the library at a time so long as he was diligent about returning them in good time.

Then the rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday was largely normal lessons, none of them strictly new but all of them settling down to the more normal rhythm after the demonstrations that had been specifically selected to give them all a good introduction to the course.

It was funny how quickly something could become routine – though Harry himself was still having problems navigating the castle at times, and on one occasion had to resort to Hagrid's advice and jump out a window. He'd felt a bit guilty about it, but the window had been quickly closed – even though he'd been sure there was nobody there.

And it was still odd that he could tear up his bedclothes every night – albeit by accident – and then find them fixed the next time he came to his room, with his letters neatly stacked in his trunk again. He'd have asked Percy for details, to check if it was something House-Elves did, but the older boy seemed to be very busy all the time and Harry was sure he'd seen Percy go into a room and then not come out of it – only to stride along a corridor in a different direction five minutes later.

Then Friday came around, which was one of the days where the First-Year Gryffindors didn't have much in the way of lessons at all – just their final new full-time class, Potions.

It was like Astronomy, in that it was a class where they only had one lesson a week but it was a two-hour double, and it was a class they had joint with the Slytherins – which was the house that Professor Snape was in charge of.

Harry didn't think that would be a problem, though. He was fairly adept at cooking (and a lot of Potions seemed to be about cooking, from what he'd read about it), and they'd already had lessons with the other three Heads of House. Professor McGonagall had been fair as far as he could tell, though he was able to admit that maybe he wasn't in the best position to notice it, and Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick had both been far too enthusiastic about their subjects to be biased at all.

About the only real concern Harry had to admit about the class was that it would mean he'd have to try not to nibble on any of the ingredients – or the equipment.

* * *

"Really?" Ron asked, at breakfast that morning. "You're looking _forward_ to Potions?"

"Well, I've enjoyed all the other classes," Harry pointed out, he felt quite sensibly. "Even Defence has been pretty good, it's just all that garlic in the classroom and the stutter that's giving me a headache."

"Yeah, but my brothers all say Snape's biased," Ron countered.

"It sounds like a bad idea to just jump to that conclusion," Hermione said. "Harry, did you just eat your fork again?"

"Well, an extra fork keeps showing up whenever I sit down to a meal," Harry replied. "I'm just assuming that it's for me."

He swallowed. "I want to make sure I'm nice and full before Potions, so I don't feel hungry _in_ Potions… actually, anyone got an idea where it is?"

"I asked one of the Badgers," Dean said. "They had it yesterday. It's, uh… yeah, you go into the door to the dungeons, and it's two floors down..."

* * *

Potions class was laid out differently to any classroom Harry had ever been in. The tables were arranged in pairs, with a hearth between each pair, and it was clear after a little thought that that was where the cauldron was meant to go.

Several of the places were already taken when Harry and his friends arrived, and after a complicated round of negotiations and place-switching that Harry could barely follow he found himself working with Daphne. Ron and Dean had ended up working together, with the black boy announcing that he 'had cooked once', and Neville and Hermione were seated together as well.

The rest of the class filtered in over the last few minutes as Harry put his textbooks on the table, and then at almost exactly nine Professor Snape entered the room.

The first thing he did was to take the list of names, which gave Harry a valuable reminder about who was in the Slytherin half of the class, but oddly enough he paused at Harry to say that Harry 'couldn't help standing out'.

While Professor Snape moved on to Dean, Ron and Blaise, Harry inspected his wings to make sure they looked the same as always. Daphne shrugged, but she looked mildly interested.

Professor Snape's description of what the class would be like was simultaneously interesting and puzzling. The bit about no wand-waving made Harry wonder if anyone could mix a potion just by following the recipe – could Aunt Petunia have done Potions class, if she wanted? - and the lists of effects were quite amazing. What would it mean to brew glory or bottle fame?

Harry wrote it all down, resolving to look it up at some point, then Professor Snape called on him.

"Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

Harry frowned briefly, then reached for his _One Thousand Magical Herbs And Fungi_. Flipping through to the end of the A section, he located Asphodel and scanned the page.

"I _think_ it's a powerful sleeping potion called the Draught of Living Death, but I'd have to double-check to make sure," he answered.

Professor Snape frowned.

"Close that book, Potter, I'm not testing your ability to look things up," the Professor said, and Harry did so promptly. "Where would you find a Bezoar?"

"In my pocket," Blaise said, before Harry had time to think about the question. "You need them around my house, I've had three stepfathers die last year."

"Zabini, was I asking you that question?" Professor Snape demanded. "Sit down and stay silent. _Potter_, what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

That one Harry _did_ know, thanks to his letters to and from Neville. "I think they're both non-magical names for the same plant."

After a long moment, Professor Snape nodded slightly.

"Perhaps this year won't be as bad as I was anticipating. For your information, a Bezoar is found in the stomach of a goat and it is a preventative against most poisons, but any Potions class will also contain several in storage in case of a potion mixed by a complete dunderhead."

Turning without further comment to the chalkboard at the front, the Potions Professor began outlining the basic rules of safety when handling potions ingredients – namely, to only use them in precisely the ways outlined by the recipe as it was presented _on the board_, to only handle them with gloves of dragon hide material (Harry hoped his own Manticore-hide gloves would suffice) and to be careful when using knives and the fire in the hearth and all the other potential sources of danger when dealing with hot, poisonous or otherwise malodorous ingredients.

A quiet discussion between Harry and Daphne as the recipe in question went up on the board led to the conclusion that Harry would do the cutting and weighing – he'd done enough of it at home – while Daphne would take responsibility for outlining what they were required to do and for stirring.

The recipe on the board was a little different from the one in the book, so Harry took notes on the differences (Daphne did the same), and then settled into a relaxing rhythm of preparing ingredients. Getting the exact correct amount of dried nettles was a bit fiddly, but the instructions specified the exact amount in ounces so Harry thought it was better to be precise; the rest went to the side. Then the horned slugs needed to be put in for stewing, which meant having two things on the fire at the same time as the main potion was supposed to be in use before the slugs were finished.

Professor Snape was going up and down the desks offering criticism to just about everyone (except Draco) but Harry thought this was entirely appropriate given that they were handling dangerous magical mixtures; he even took the opportunity to ask for clarification on what was to be done with the cut-offs, which Professor Snape told him should simply be thrown away if they were common ingredients like nettles.

When Harry ate them a minute or so later during a quiet section of the preparation process, Professor Snape seemed unsure what to make of it.

"Can you do that to everything?" Daphne asked, as she stirred the cauldron and they waited for the slugs to finish stewing.

"Most things," Harry replied, double-checking the recipe. Nettles, snake fangs… the only things left to go in were the porcupine quills and the stewed slugs, and those both had to be added in quick succession after the cauldron was off the heat. "I haven't tried anything poisonous though."

"I'm pretty sure nettles _are_ poisonous," Daphne replied, sounding amused. "How do _you_ tell if something's poisonous?"

"Oh, well… I read a book about it once," Harry told her. "A Muggle book, I mean. It said that if you don't have a reaction for several hours after it's rubbed on your skin, and you don't for a few minutes after you've put it against your lips, and you hold it in your mouth for at least fifteen minutes without anything bad happening – and a few other steps – then you can eventually be sure."

"Muggles," Daphne chuckled. "Wizards just have a spell for it. It's much simpler."

She frowned. "Though I don't think it's set up for dragons. Actually I don't think anyone knows much about dragons that eat plants as well as meat."

"No chattering in class," Professor Snape warned.

* * *

Harry wondered if there was a book somewhere in the library which explained all the odd interactions that potions ingredients could have. He'd overheard the Potions teacher criticizing Neville for nearly following two of the instructions in the wrong order, and apparently if the porcupine quills had been added _before_ the cauldron had come off the fire it would have resulted in a nasty, magically-infused mess that could easily have dissolved the cauldron.

Nothing in Harry's experience cooking could explain that, at least not directly, but that was why he was here to learn – and it was clear that, while caustic, Professor Snape knew his potions. Four pairs had made mistakes which had rendered their potions useless or nearly so, and the Professor had barely had to glance at the results before outlining exactly where they'd gone wrong.

All that meant that Potions slotted into Harry's Hogwarts experience somewhere in the middle of the pack. It wasn't as pleasant so far as Charms, perhaps, but it was a better classroom experience than Defence and was more paws-on than the somewhat one-note History of Magic.

Maybe Professor Snape's brusque attitude would become a problem, as time went on, but Harry could overlook that sort of thing. He'd been doing it at home for years.

* * *

"Potter, stay behind," Professor Snape instructed, as they were packing up. "I want a word."

"Yes, Sir," Harry agreed promptly, thinking quickly over the schedule. He'd planned to go up and get started on the Potions homework straight after the lesson, but since the homework had turned out to be prep for the _next_ lesson it would arguably be better done on Thursday evening if possible.

At the Potions teacher's words, Draco and his friends (Vincent and Gregory, if Harry remembered right) all sniggered on their way past and out the door.

Once the rest of the class had left, Professor Snape approached Harry's desk.

"Mr. Potter," he began. "I have been teaching Potions at this school for many years, but never have I seen anything quite so foolish as a student eating Potions ingredients."

Harry tilted his head a little. "I'm sorry, Sir? I usually eat the leftover ingredients when I cook."

Professor Snape blinked. "When you… cook."

"Yes, Sir," Harry agreed. "My Aunt and Uncle expect me to cook, and I _think_ they try to not give me enough, but it doesn't work because I can eat the eggshells and packaging and stuff and that fills me up."

"Your… Aunt," Professor Snape repeated. "Mr. Potter, are you saying that you have been cared for the last few years by Petunia Evans and her oaf of a husband?"

Harry nodded. "If that's what she was called before she married Uncle Vernon. But they haven't been all that bad, because… well, since I turned into a dragon I think they couldn't find a way to make it awful for me."

He frowned. "Hold on, how do you know my Aunt's name?"

"That is none of your business, Mr. Potter," Professor Snape told him. "But, for your information, you should not eat or drink _anything_ in a Potions laboratory because of the serious risk that it is contaminated and may be toxic. I do not care if you have not suffered a toxic reaction before because you are a _dragon_, this is something you should not do."

"Okay, Professor," Harry said, nodding. "Sorry about that. Do you have any tips on how I could avoid the temptation?"

"I am not your nutritional consultant, Mr. Potter," Professor Snape told him. "Since the rest of your year, and all the other years in Hogwarts, have managed to refrain from eating potions ingredients for the last decade then it should not tax you to do the same."

Harry considered that, and nodded again. "All right, Professor. I'll do my best."

Professor Snape frowned, examining Harry's expression, then seemed to accept (possibly on guesswork) that the Gryffindor had been sincere.

"Another question, Mr. Potter," he said. "You mentioned turning into a dragon, and of course I can see that you are now. But how did this come about?"

"I'm sorry, Professor, I don't really remember," Harry admitted, wings twitching slightly. He raised a talon to his muzzle, scratching absently as he thought. "It was kind of a long time ago… it was after I'd gone to school for the first time, but not long afterwards."

Harry waited to see if Professor Snape had any further questions. His face had gone an odd colour and he was muttering things about 'legacy' and 'delayed Charms' to himself, and after what he thought was an appropriate length of time Harry raised his forepaw.

"Can I go, Sir?"

"What?" Professor Snape asked. "Yes. Of course you can go!"

* * *

It was nice to have a teacher so concerned with his well-being.

* * *

AN:

* * *

I did consider what House to put Harry in, but ultimately the fact remains that while he's a lot more of a book-reader than in canon it's still not enough to put him in Ravenclaw.

It's funny how a willingness to look things up, a smartarse Slytherin, a few letters with Neville Longbottom and being a dragon can change a Potions class.


	8. Extracurricular Dragon

That afternoon, since they all had free time, Harry invited his friends down to Hagrid's hut.

Well, the Slytherins who Harry thought were sort of friends didn't have free time, because their schedule was different, and if you counted Ravenclaw House then he didn't really invite many of his friends at all. But the friends who'd ended up in Gryffindor with him were all willing to come – even Hermione, though Harry had to point out to her that since the Potions homework was about their _next_ potion then the logical thing to do would be to complete it closer to the next class.

Hagrid was delighted to see them all, laying out rock cakes for all five first-years and asking about their classes.

Harry related how he thought of all the lessons, eating through the rock cakes on his plate as he did so (which meant everyone's rock cakes, as the others slipped their unwanted cakes onto his plate whenever Hagrid was distracted.) Neville wasn't very happy with Potions, while Dean had said that he'd begun trying to do sketches during History of Magic to stay awake and Ron was generally dissatisfied with how things were going in the wanded classes; Hermione of course couldn't get enough of all the lessons, and asked Hagrid eagerly how much he remembered about the subjects in the rest of the year.

Hagrid's somewhat-embarrassed reply that he hadn't really done very well, and that it had been almost fifty years ago, left Hermione blushing a little and apologizing for her mistake – though the big man was quick to assure her that no harm had been done.

While that conversation was going on, Harry finished the last of the rock cakes, and managed through dint of considerable effort to reach Fang and start stroking him. The massive Irish wolfhound still didn't like the idea of getting any closer to the dragon than he absolutely had to, but after a few minutes of that treatment he seemed to have calmed down a bit.

He also took a quick look at the paper on the table, which had a story about an attempted bank robbery and another about someone in wizard prison saying 'bloody hell, he's a dragon' over and over again. Maybe it was a slow news day.

"So," Hagrid said, after he'd heard all about Harry's misadventure into Ravenclaw tower. "Any of you got any thoughts about what clubs you're gonna do? Didn't really get into any of 'em meself – oh, you've seen 'em yet?"

"I don't think so," Harry replied.

"They don't announce any of the clubs until after our first week," Hermione informed them. "That's when the upper years do Quidditch tryouts, as well. That's so the students all know how much work they have, so they don't take on clubs which take up too much time."

"Okay, seriously, did you _eat_ the school syllabus or something?" Dean asked, without any real malice. "How do you know all this stuff?"

"Some of us read," Hermione replied with a huff.

"Yeah, and Harry reads a lot too," Dean countered. "Heck, Neville's the one who's got _Tooth and Fang_ at the moment. We're all reading."

"I'm not!" Ron announced, sounding proud of the fact. "I'm only reading what I need to."

"Doing the bare minimum isn't going to help you with your grades, Ron," Hermione pointed out. "Don't you agree, Hagrid?"

Hagrid nodded. "Summat in that, right enough."

"Ron's lying, anyway," Harry clarified. "I found something in my collection he likes."

Ron's ears turned red.

There was a _whoosh_ overhead, however, which interrupted the conversation, and Hagrid looked out the window to see what it was.

"That looked like Charlie Weasley to me," he said, sounding confused.

"Charlie?" Ron repeated. "No way it can be Charlie."

He got up to look out of the same window, the one which pointed in the direction of the Black Lake, and stared for a moment.

"Bloody hell, that _is_ Charlie."

He headed for the door, and the others weren't far behind.

* * *

"Charlie, what on earth are you doing at Hogwarts?" Ron asked, as they reached the shore of the Black Lake. "Aren't you meant to be in Romania?"

"I was yesterday," Charlie replied, holding the bristles of a sleek-looking broomstick in the water. A faint hiss of steam was rising from the contact point, and a huge plume of white mist showed that it had originally been much more violent.

Up close, Harry had to admit that Charlie looked like the sort of person who could work with dragons. He was short for an adult, stocky, heavily freckled, and looked like he could probably wrestle a much larger dragon than Harry to the ground.

"But – hold on, you mean you've flown all the way here from _Romania_?" Ron blinked. "Why?"

"Ron, you sent me a letter about one of your housemates being a _dragon_," Charlie replied, shaking the water off the bristles now that the broom had stopped actually generating steam. "I came as soon as I got permission from my boss."

Still inspecting his broom, Charlie produced a wand with a flick of his wrist and drew all the water off in one smooth motion. "So, how are you getting on, Ronnie? Uncle Fabian's old wand not giving you too much trouble?"

"It kind of is," Ron replied. "The core's nearly poking out. I don't know how you used it for seven years without any trouble."

"So that's how you've got your brother's old wand?" Harry asked, remembering something Ron had said in passing on the train. "I wondered what kind of wand _he_ was using."

Finally satisfied that his broom was cooled down to a safe temperature and dry enough that he could leave it alone, Charlie turned to his brother. "Yes, I got a new wand when I started-"

He stopped.

"...Ron, why didn't you mention that your dragon classmate was here?"

"Oh, um… I thought you'd notice?" Ron said. "This is Harry."

Charlie strode over, looking Harry up and down.

"Pleased to meet you?" Harry offered, putting his paw out, and Charlie shook it. That prompted the others to introduce themselves, shaking Charlie's hand as well.

"Do you have any idea how cool it is that you're a dragon?" Charlie then said. "I've always liked dragons, but normally it's quite hard to see them up close even if your job is working with them – it takes a lot of magic to stun them."

"I haven't actually tested if that's true for me," Harry volunteered. "But when I was being Sorted and I closed my eyes the Sorting Hat couldn't tell I was there for a moment."

"That sounds like magic resistance to me," Charlie replied. "We're always told the only place to cast a spell on a dragon where it's remotely likely to work is the eyes."

He stepped back a bit, and looked at Harry's forepaws. "Those are unusually dextrous… obviously you're able to talk, while most dragons aren't… do you mind if I see your wings?"

Harry spread them, interested to see where this was going – he'd never met a dragon expert before, and after Charlie had come all this way it seemed only polite.

"Wings supported by alar phalanges, differing lengths," Charlie muttered to himself. "No elbow spine, and a long wing insertion along the upper body. Very large for the body size – Ron said you can fly with these?"

"That's right," Harry confirmed. "I'm still training to try and go faster and for longer."

"And you're clearly not developing at the same rate as a normal dragon..." Charlie went on. "Can you breathe fire?"

Harry nodded, and at Charlie's request he demonstrated. It wasn't something he did very often, but what he produced was a jet of quite intense orange-yellow flame that could reach out about six feet if he really pushed it.

* * *

"Um… Charlie?" Ron asked, after about twenty minutes.

"Huh?" Charlie asked, looking up from taking measurements of Harry's teeth. Dean was sat down on the grass with a pencil, with sketch drawings of Harry's wing, head, tail and paw already down on the paper, and next to him Hermione was taking notes of her own about the spells Charlie had already used.

(Based on the results of the spells, Harry didn't have dragon pox, scalerot or Mingus' Tongue, his wing membrane was strong enough for sustained flight at high speeds and his fire was hot enough that if sustained it could melt lead. On the other hand, the spell designed to detect a dragon's age had produced a cloud of sparks before announcing that Harry was six weeks old, so he had the feeling that one wasn't really properly designed for dragons like him.)

"Not that I'm not pleased to see you or anything," Ron went on. "But where are you going with all this?"

Harry watched as Ron's handwave took in himself, Charlie, Dean and Hermione – along with Neville, who had sat down to read the paper for something to do.

Charlie took a moment to understand the question, then realized suddenly what Ron was getting at.

"Oh – right," he flushed slightly. "Sorry, I've been all excited about this – but – do you realize how amazing this is for me?"

"Yeah, I think we all realize how amazing it is," Ron agreed. "It looks like you want to do another NEWT, this time in Harry Potter."

Charlie paused.

"Wait, wait, hold on," he said, looking back at Harry (who waved). "So when you said _Harry_, you meant Harry _Potter?"_

Dean sniggered. "Did you not work that out yet?"

* * *

As the sun was slowly setting in the west, Charlie finally stepped away and went through his thick sheaf of notes. Dean handed him one last sketch, this time of Harry's dentition, and Charlie accepted it with a thanks.

"Let's see..." he said, flicking through. "Wings, tail… musculature structure, and the spines… various descriptions and dietary habits..."

"What are you going to do with that lot?" Ron asked. "It seems like you've got enough to write Harry's biography."

"Oh, that's not what I'm planning," Charlie replied.

He looked faintly embarrassed. "Sorry, I should have mentioned… I couldn't find anyone else who'd done it yet, so what I'd like to do is to describe Harry."

"Describe Harry?" Dean repeated. "I can do it for you. Little dragon, lots of books, and he's black."

"No, I mean a description like in a book," Charlie tried.

"Oh, I think I see," Hermione said. "You mean an official description that spells out how to identify whatever Harry's type of dragon is. Like how the Peruvian Vipertooth is copper-coloured and has venomous fangs."

"Exactly!" the young man told her, pleased with her way of putting it. "With this much information I should be able to publish a monograph – do you mind if I use your sketches, Dean? I'll be sure to credit you."

"Sounds great," Dean agreed. "Can you send us each a copy? It'd be cool to show my mum."

Harry didn't see Charlie's reaction, as he was pulling his robes back on, but it seemed like Charlie must have nodded or something.

"What are you going to call Harry?" Neville asked, looking up from his book – he'd finished the paper and was two thirds of the way through Hagrid's reference volume on the plants of the Forbidden Forest. "You can't just call him the Harry Potter dragon."

"Well, the names _can_ be changed afterwards," Charlie replied, frowning. "The Romanian Longhorn used to be the Rumanian Longhorn, and there was a big argument about whether to rename the Ukranian Ironbelly back in the twenties because of the Soviet Union but they eventually decided against it. So the name I use doesn't have to be permanent."

He flicked through the documents. "I was thinking… the Black-Backed Bookwyrm."

Ron snorted.

"Is that okay?" Charlie added.

"Sure," Harry replied. "I mean… none of the stuff we've discussed is secret or anything, and I found some stuff out myself. I didn't know jinxes bounced off my wings."

"I might actually leave that detail out," Charlie said, after a lot of thought. "I'll just say you're magic resistant like other dragons, and apart from that mostly focus on the differences."

"Are you going to be okay flying back?" Harry asked. "It's quite a long way to Romania."

"I'll probably drop in on Mum and Dad for the evening," Charlie replied. "It'll be a nice surprise for them. Then I'll fly back tomorrow."

He shook Harry's paw. "Thank you so much for letting me do this – it's been the kind of thing I've dreamed about for years."

Harry smiled, glad to have been able to help.

As Charlie was about to leave, though – probably going to head up to the castle to use the Floo that Neville had told Harry about – the young dragon had a sudden idea.

"Do you read Muggle books?" he asked.

"_Muggle_ books?" Charlie repeated. "I… don't think so, no. Not since I tried Muggle Studies – it wasn't for me."

"Can you hold on a few minutes, please?" Harry asked. "I think you might like some of them."

He checked that his wings were properly through the holes in his robes, then took off – flying hard for the castle doors.

* * *

Through the doors, up the grand staircase, into Gryffindor tower, loping up seven flights of stairs, a quick "sorry!" to an older boy who nearly got flattened, and Harry skidded to a halt in the First-Year dorm room. He rummaged through the books he'd brought along, wondering which one to pick, then after a bit of hesitation selected _Dragonflight_.

Setting it aside for a moment, he opened the dorm room window and then climbed out. Snagging the book again, he jumped clear of Gryffindor Tower and spread his wings – feeling the evening sun and the air – then dove right back down to where he'd started.

"Did you just jump out a window?" Charlie asked, blinking.

"I suggested that," Hagrid supplied. "Easy enough with wings, right lad?"

Harry nodded, furling his wings after his three-point landing, and held out the book he'd retrieved from his trunk.

"I think you might like this book," he explained. "There's no magic in it, or at least not the kind of magic wizards have, but the dragons can teleport and speak with their minds… to some people."

"Teleport?" Charlie repeated.

"'e means Apparate," Hagrid told the outdoorsy Wizard. "That's what you mean, right?"

"I don't think I've heard of Apparating before," Harry frowned. "So wizards can do that as well?"

He looked at Charlie's broomstick. "Why did you have to fly here?"

"Apparating is harder the further you're going," Charlie said. "You can do all sorts of nasty things to yourself if you're going too far."

That didn't sound as good as _between_ did to Harry, though he was still curious why Charlie didn't just go in shorter Apparition jumps. Unless it was just that Charlie liked flying?

As he pondered that, Charlie took the book. It took a moment for Harry to let go, until he noticed that he hadn't and concentrated a bit on doing so.

"Sorry," Harry apologized, as he finally released the book. "I-"

"We did talk about that," Charlie remembered. "That hoard behaviour thing. It's really interesting, because I don't think there are any other dragons which actually _do_ that."

"That's Harry for you," Dean chuckled. "Maybe he read about it in a book?"

* * *

After that unusual Friday afternoon, the rest of the weekend was more like what Harry had imagined would be normal.

Homework got done, and books got read. Harry visited the Ravenclaw library twice, this time answering proper riddles to get into the Ravenclaw common room, and it felt very satisfying to do so – a bit like a scene from _The Hobbit_, though fortunately the penalty for getting the riddle wrong was nothing like as severe as in the riddle-game in that book.

The first riddle had asked him what tree held knowledge on every leaf, and after some careful thought he'd decided it was a book because another word for a page was a leaf. Then the second one had been when Christmas came before Halloween, which Harry hadn't managed to get and so he'd skipped that day.

The third riddle was about something which grew without being alive, needed air without lungs, and drowned without a mouth. That one Harry answered quite quickly, realizing it was 'fire' (and Padma Patil had groaned, both because she hadn't got it herself and because obviously asking a _dragon_ about _fire_ had been an easy one).

* * *

"I'm not really sure that flying on a broomstick is the same as flying with wings," Harry said, looking back along his own body and inspecting his wings. Dean's sketches from last Friday had been the first time he'd really had a good look at how they were laid out, rather than relying on odd angles and instinct, so he was quite interested in the idea of a proper flying lesson that afternoon… whether or not it would actually work out nicely.

"But you're the only person who's got experience with flying, right?" Hermione asked. "At least, in our year?"

"What am I, chopped liver?" Ron demanded. "Our brooms may be a bit naff, but I've been flying for years!"

Hermione blushed. "Okay, um… good point. But I meant that you grew up in the Muggle world, so do you have any ideas?"

Harry thought about that, looking from Ron to Seamus (who'd also been boasting about his flying ability), then to Parvati, who'd also mentioned a bit of broomstick experience. He didn't think it was worth asking about how far they could fly…

"Can brooms hover?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah, easy," Ron said. "Unless it's really old, then you kind of have to tilt it back a bit 'cause their charms go a bit duff. That usually sorts it, though."

Harry nodded. "And I assume they're faster in a dive… what about getting on them?"

"Just like you'd expect," Ron replied. "Tell them to come up and that's what they do. Then you can make it hover at the right height and get on – though you have to make sure you get the cushioning charm in the right place."

"There's a cushioning charm?" Dean blinked. "What does that do?"

"I read about this," Hermione announced, glad to be back in the position of 'knowledgeable'. "It was invented in 1820 and it provides a magical cushion to make riding a broomstick much more comfortable."

"...yeah, that," Ron confirmed. "But apart from that, you lean back to make it slow down and lean forward to make it speed up. Kind of? It's hard to explain, but it really makes a lot of sense once you start."

As the conversation continued, Harry flicked through the library book about Quidditch that Hermione had been reading. Then he paused.

"Um… Ron?" he began. "Where exactly do Quidditch matches happen?"

"Huh?" Ron replied. "Why?"

"This book says that Quidditch is – or used to – be illegal within a hundred miles of a town," Harry explained. "But I'm not sure that the person who made that law understood what a town was, or maybe that they didn't understand what a _mile_ was."

"...yeah, that sounds crazy," Dean agreed, sniggering.

"There's a pitch on Dartmoor," Parvati supplied. "One in central Wales, one near St. Mary's Loch and the last one's a little southwest of Halkirk. I think there used to be one in the Fens, but it closed ages ago."

At their looks, she winked. "What? I'm not just a pretty face, and besides, my father used to play for the Arrows."

"Really?" Dean asked. "That's pretty impressive. They're a local team, right?"

Ron sniggered. "They're a _League_ team, mate. One of the thirteen teams in the League."

"It's not like it was a full time job," Parvati added. "Teams only play twelve games a year."

"I think we're getting off topic," Harry said. "So the important stuff is… sit on the broom, lean back to stop, and apart from that we'll get told during the lesson?"

Nobody disagreed with that, so he decided it was probably fairly accurate.

"Malfoy keeps saying how he's been flying for years," Ron added. "Bet he's not as good as he thinks he is, though."

He turned to Harry. "Any idea if you'll be allowed to skip the broomstick bit? You're clearly able to fly."

"If Draco has to do it, then so do I," Harry replied, with what he felt to be quite good logic.

* * *

Once the day's other lessons were behind them, the Gryffindor and Slytherin First-years congregated on a neatly-mown lawn on the grounds. Harry brought up the rear with Neville, assuring the timid boy that he'd be ready to help out if Neville got in trouble, then lined up with the others by the two rows of broomsticks.

As Ron had said – though not as clearly as Madam Hooch – you had to tell the broom to come "up", and it took almost everyone a few tries. Even Draco didn't get it quite right the first time, lazily drawling the instruction and then looking disappointed when the broom simply twitched and rolled over.

"You have to be firm!" Madam Hooch instructed. "Firm but not shrill, and make your instruction clear! Mr. Malfoy, I don't care if your broom at home is a well-crafted precision instrument, you need to learn how to use _any_ broom not just one!"

Once he'd got his broom to jump up, Harry inspected it – noticing how the twigs were a bit uneven and tattered. All the ones in the class were similarly tired-looking, though if you thought about it maybe that just meant they'd tend to be fairly reliable because the bad ones would have disintegrated a long time ago.

Or maybe not.

Then the next step was how to sit on the broom. The feet had to go to the side of the brush binding or on a bipod, never kicking the handle end of the brush itself, because it was far easier to unseat them that way; the hands had to be turned properly, and the body properly rested on the cushioning charm. Harry's unusual body shape caused him several problems with that bit, and Madam Hooch came over to help him sort himself out.

They'd decided his tail should probably be left to fly free in the wind while his wings could help in the corners and were working on how the cushioning charm should carry his weight – but then Neville suddenly yelped.

"Lean back!" Ron called, as the poor First-year went flying skywards. "Nev, if you hold on too tight it'll only go faster!"

Dropping his broom, Harry jumped skywards to follow his friend. Madam Hooch did so as well, but she'd barely kicked off when Neville slipped and fell.

Gritting his teeth, Harry pulled up-and-over. He reached out to grab Neville's arm and yanked them both out of the dive, making his foreleg ache faintly from the force, and flared his wings with a hollow _boom_ of air to shed velocity.

* * *

By the time Madam Hooch reached them, Harry had lowered Neville to the ground as gently as he could manage. He was panting, shocked by his fall, and Harry was sitting down and gingerly spreading his wings to see if he'd damaged them. (He wasn't sure how he'd tell, but it seemed like the right thing to do.)

"Are you all right, Mr. Longbottom?" Madam Hooch asked. "Look at me."

Neville did so, and the flying instructor shone her wand light into his eyes one at a time. "Looks all right… nothing broken?"

The Gryffindor shook his head. He winced, clutching his shoulder for a moment, then let out a slow breath.

"I… t-think it's nothing," he said.

"Well, then, if it still hurts be sure to take it to Madam Pomfrey," Madam Hooch went on. "And you, Mr. Potter!"

Harry winced, hoping that he wasn't about to be told off.

"I'd have preferred you left the job to me, but you have good instincts," she said. "But if you hadn't been in the way I could have used a Slowing Charm to slow Mr. Longbottom down. Keep that in mind in future."

"Yes, Madam Hooch," Harry replied.

She clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't sound so glum! Your instincts are good, and we can train the rest. I expect you'll be a fine Quidditch player if you decide to join the team in a later year."

* * *

Fortunately, that was the most excitement that the lesson saw. In fact, after the incident, Madam Hooch took care to start with Neville – using a different and particularly low-powered broom, and walking him through the basics of how to shift your weight to either rise or fall.

After ten minutes or so Neville was doing fine, and then the rest of the class went through the same in groups of three or four. It meant the whole flying lesson overran by nearly an hour, but it also meant that – despite their scare – everyone got at least slightly used to flying.

Harry, however, found himself at an unexpected disadvantage. If he tried to use just the broom he was fairly good, and he already knew he was both strong and manoeuvrable with his wings, but if he combined the two the result tended to go badly.

"Hmm..." Madam Hooch mused, eventually, inspecting the latest dragon-shaped dent in the lawn before repairing it with a wave of her wand. "We'll work on that, Mr. Potter."

"Why can't I just use my wings?" Harry asked. "I know this is a lesson about broomsticks, but it's _called_ a flying lesson."

"I've got an idea," Dean said. "What about if you use a broomstick like… what's it called… reheat, that's it. That thing fighter planes do when they go faster in a straight line."

"I don't think I've ever heard of that," Harry admitted.

"Dad thinks it's cool," Dean explained.

Harry had to admit, it _would_ be good to be able to go faster in a straight line.

So long as that straight line wasn't straight into the ground, that was.

* * *

The next evening, after Potions and after Hermione had pulled the rest of their group into a homework session in the library, Neville asked Harry if he'd seen a shiny orb-shaped object with a golden rim.

"I… hmm," Harry mused, thinking about the various things he'd seen around the castle.

He knew he was well-disposed to spot shiny objects, which he assumed was probably a dragon thing getting its chance to show off in the much more shiny environment of Hogwarts rather than Little Whingeing JMI School, but he couldn't remember something offhand that was like that and said so.

"I got it at breakfast a couple of days ago," Neville told him. "It's a Remembrall, it's supposed to help me know if I've forgotten something, but I think I've forgotten it somewhere."

"Yeah, I can see how that's a problem," Harry agreed. "So… does it help you remember what it is you've forgotten?"

"No, just tells me that I've forgotten something," his friend replied. "I think, anyway… I've only ever heard of them before."

"I'll look them up," Hermione volunteered. "It'll probably be in _A Hundred Odd Office Oddments."_

Madam Pince appeared from behind a shelf as if by magic (which, come to think of it, it probably was). "No unnecessary noise in the library."

"Sorry," Harry said, lowering his voice. "Okay, Neville… let's see. Did you have it in Potions?"

"I…" Neville began, thinking hard, then nodded. "Oh – yes, because I used it to see if I'd forgotten anything I needed for the lesson. And I hadn't."

Harry nodded, thinking back to the Potions lesson.

He hadn't seen it on Neville's desk, but then he'd been concentrating fairly hard anyway and Neville might not have had it out – Professor Snape's second potion for them had been more complex than the first, though he hadn't had a quiz to start the lesson, and the Remembrall might have been more of a distraction than a help.

"Okay, I'll retrace the route," he decided. "I've got all my homework done anyway, except for the Potions."

"Are you sure you're going to call that done?" Hermione asked.

"Well, I did as much as we got told to," Harry replied. "And I didn't write too large."

"But there's so much more you could-"

"Hermione," Ron interrupted her. "Don't worry. Please?"

"If the amount of work I'm doing isn't enough to get a high grade, I'll do more," Harry agreed. "But I've got good marks so far… I'll come back here and tell you how I get on, okay?"

"Right," Dean agreed. "And we'll try and make sure Hermione doesn't overdo it."

As Harry left, he heard Hermione protesting again and Dean pointing out that if she filled her evenings to the brim with homework she wouldn't have any space for clubs or for when it was her turn with _Tooth and Fang_.

Hiding a smile, he set on his way back down through the halls and staircases of Hogwarts to reach the dungeons.

* * *

Several floors later, Harry had little to show for the journey.

He'd met the caretaker's cat, Mrs. Norris, who was sufficiently wary of him to keep a wide berth but sufficiently suspicious to keep an eye on him anyway, been very ineffectually stabbed by the insubstantial lance of Lord Ridley (until Sir Nicholas and a ghost by the name of Harold Rathburne had carried him away in an ethereal armlock, apologizing to him the whole way) and nearly been hit by some awful glitter-bomb that Ron's twin brothers had cooked up to drop on Professor Quirrell.

There was no sign of an orb with a golden rim, however, and Harry had retraced their steps all the way to the Potions lab when he stopped and frowned.

There was Neville's scent, all right, making its way up to the Great Hall for lunch… and there was Neville's scent, weaker but still there, heading down a different corridor.

Tail flicking from side to side with interest, Harry checked the time – it was about halfway through a lesson period – and followed the trail.

* * *

Unfortunately for Harry, the trail seemed to go nowhere in particular that he could see. There were a lot of dank smells down in the dungeons of the castle, and it was harder and harder to pick out the faint traces of Neville… until finally he lost it in front of a blank stretch of wall, all jumbled up with all the other scents.

He sighed, blowing out a faint flicker of smoke, and shrugged.

It had been worth a try, though.

* * *

Halfway back up into the above-ground section of the castle, a thought struck Harry. He'd been so caught up in tracking down that trail that he'd missed out on what it actually _meant_, which was that – probably – someone had taken Neville's Remembrall. If it wasn't in Neville's bag, and it wasn't anywhere he could have dropped it, and the only other scent trail was someone leaving the room Neville had been in…

Harry wasn't exactly the main character from that detective book he'd read, but he could work that one out. Which meant the best thing to do was to find a Prefect… but Percy was still proving very difficult to track down.

But now Harry had another idea, and so when he reached the Grand Staircase he crouched before spreading his wings and jumping.

All the floors of the castle went past in a few seconds – a couple of Ravenclaws making their way up past the third floor whooped – and Harry alighted on the guard rail at the top, scrabbling for a moment before pulling himself over onto the top floor of the main castle.

Left turn, right turn, and he was approaching the brass door knocker – which had a couple of first- and second-year Ravenclaws standing around it.

"Afternoon," Terry Boot said. "I didn't get this one."

Harry waved, going briefly to three legs instead of four to do so, then knocked.

"Ah, you again," the door knocker greeted him. "What has roots nobody sees, is taller than trees, up it goes, and yet never grows?"

"I think it's supposed to be a mountain, but mountains grow as well," Harry replied. "They just do it really slowly."

"A fair answer with your working shown," the door-knocker replied, and opened.

"Actually, I'm afraid it's in one of the books I've read," Harry apologized. "Gollum asks it in _The Hobbit._"

"I suppose you can't win them all," the door knocker said amiably as the Ravenclaws went through, followed by Harry.

Inside, he located the person he'd been after – the Ravenclaw prefect he'd met several times already, who he now knew to be called Penelope. She listened to his explanation without interruption, nodding slowly, then stood.

"Thank you for telling me this," she said. "I'll have to have a word with Percy to make sure he's making enough time in his schedule for the students of his own house – and check on the other Gryffindor prefects as well, or ask Professor McGonagall to do it."

"Do you think you'll be able to get Neville his Remembrall back?" Harry asked, worried.

"I'll take care of it, don't worry," Penelope assured him.

* * *

On Saturday morning, Neville had his Remembrall again.

"So, based on what I read, you can sort of ask it questions," Hermione was saying. "So as well as 'have I forgotten something', you can think, 'have I forgotten something to do with my classes'..."

Harry listened with half an ear, chewing through the spare breakfast fork the House-Elves had provided him, then his ear perked up as he noticed the sign-up sheets going up on the walls thanks to Professor Flitwick.

"Looks like we can sign up to the clubs," he said, getting the attention of his friends, and hurried over. A lot of the other students did as well, crowding around, but Harry had managed to get in quick – which was fortunate, as he wasn't really tall enough to see over a crowd.

It looked like there were about two dozen, roughly speaking. Some of them weren't any interest to Harry, like the Gobstones club (which sounded unpleasant) or the Charms club (which looked like it was for the later years), and he didn't even know what Rummy club was… but some of them looked much better. Swimming club sounded vaguely interesting, though Harry hadn't swum except for lessons at school which hadn't gone very well, and the Book club was the one which looked the most appealing of all.

It took a few minutes for Harry to squirm his way over to that sheet and tap it, which added his name with a flourish of an enchanted quill. It was really impressive, just one of the ways magic made things easier, and he saw Ron putting his name down for the Chess club at about the same time. (That sheet was particularly popular.)

Once the scrum had faded a bit, Dean put himself down for the Art club – where he joined a number of unfamiliar names, but also Blaise Zabini. The Slytherin boy seemed to have signed up for about four different clubs, and Harry wasn't sure if that was just enthusiasm or wanting to decide which he'd continue with later, but it tempted him before he ultimately decided to stick to just the one.

Hermione hadn't wanted to do any of them at all, and Ron was trying to convince her to give at least one a go when the Weasley twins came hurrying over.

"Harry!" one of them said.

"Just the person we wanted to see," the other continued.

"Do you think you could help us with something?"

The second one held up a red envelope. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to deal with this?"

"By which we mean eat this."

"Our dear mother gets very uptight about things."

"Even when we've been punished for them already."

Harry felt like he was watching a tennis game.

"How are you doing that?" he asked, as the envelope began to emit curls of smoke.

"Don't have time for that now," said the one not holding the envelope, picking up a pepper grinder and grinding some over the smoking envelope. "You could really help us out."

"Just dispose of this for us."

"It should be a snap."

"I think it's a good idea, Harry," Percy said, surprising Harry. "My brothers _have_ broken the rules, but they deserve detention – not public humiliation."

"We're just thinking of the children," said George, or possibly Fred.

"Don't want them deafened," George, or perhaps Fred, agreed.

Harry opened his mouth to ask, but the letter was starting to curl up at the edges now. George held it out, Harry got slightly confused, and in a moment the letter was going down his throat.

A few tense seconds passed in silence, as the Weasleys waited with bated breath – along with Neville, while Hermione and Dean just looked confused.

There was a faint tickling in Harry's stomach, but nothing that seemed important.

"Phew," George said (Harry had decided to call them both George unless something changed). "Thanks, Harry."

Harry tried to say it was nothing, but what came out was a magically enhanced shout. **"DISRESPECTING A-"**

His glasses went bouncing away across the floor as he shut his mouth with a snap.

"Mm?" he asked.

"It's a Howler," Ron supplied. "It's a magical letter that shouts at the person who gets it."

"**TOLD YOU-"** Harry bellowed, then decided to just hold his mouth shut until the conversation was over.

"Mum loves sending them whenever we do something wrong," George supplied. "And normally there's no way out of it, we just let them run. But since you're around..."

"They sound unpleasant," Hermione frowned. "Why doesn't she just tell you off in a normal letter?"

"I bet it's just that it lets off steam," Dean suggested.

George retrieved Harry's glasses, and George took them to hand off to Harry. "There you go. And, um… it should only take a few minutes until it stops."

* * *

After the hubbub had died down, Harry went back over to look at the sign up sheets. To his delight, Hermione and Neville had decided to go for the Book Club as well, and the first meeting was on Sunday afternoon.

"Harry," Percy said, getting his attention, and Harry looked around.

"Yes?" he asked, then sighed in relief when Mrs. Weasley's shouts didn't fill the Great Hall.

"I wanted to apologize," Percy told him. "Penelope told me about what happened yesterday, and… well, I was so pleased with the good side of being a Prefect that I forgot about the difficult sides of the job."

Harry nodded, thinking about when Percy had told him how many classes he was taking.

"Maybe you need the same advice as Hermione?" he suggested. "She keeps trying to work as hard as possible and spend _all_ her time on class work, but Dean thinks that's a bad idea this early in the year because then she's got nowhere to go during exam time."

He tried to remember the way Dean had put it. "Something about trying to go everywhere in a high gear meaning you can't get started."

Percy frowned. "Is a gear one of those things Muggle cars have?"

"I know, I didn't really understand it either," Harry admitted. "I know bikes have them, but the school bike I used for cycling proficiency didn't have any gears and I never got used to which way around they are."

Percy nodded. "Well – what I'll try and do is to make sure that when I _am_ doing my school work, I'm always in the library or the common room. And if you do need my help for a proper Prefect thing, just interrupt me."

* * *

That lunch, Harry was finally reaching the end of _The Seeress of Kell – _well into what looked like being a very happy ending, even if it was one bereft of dragons – when Draco Malfoy came over, accompanied by Vincent and Gregory.

"I suppose you think that's big of you, do you?" Draco demanded.

Harry looked down at himself, wondering if he'd gained any weight – he'd certainly been eating better at the castle, or at least better in food terms – then back up at Draco. "Pardon?"

"What's your problem, Malfoy?" Ron asked.

"Shut up, Weasley," Draco instructed. "Potter's been getting a Prefect to do his dirty work."

Harry flared out a wing, separating Ron and Draco before the latter had finished speaking, and looked at his book. "Can it wait? I'm almost finished, there's this knight who Mandorallen is insulting and it's really funny."

Draco seemed slightly bemused, but rallied. "Well, if you'd rather wait, we could make it a formal thing. Wizard's duel, tonight at midnight in the trophy room."

Harry paused. "Hold on a moment."

He turned to Hermione, who had been watching in a kind of vague shock. "Are wizard's duels allowed by the school rules?"

At that, his friend reached into her bag to get out one of the books she carried everywhere.

"What are you, Potter?" Draco demanded. "Chicken? Looking for a way out of the duel?"

"Well, I _know_ going out after curfew isn't allowed," Harry answered, vaguely noticing that a lot more people were listening now. "But if a duel _is_ allowed, then we could have one outside after lunch? I always thought the person who got challenged got to pick where and what."

"I – hold on," Hermione mumbled, as on Harry's other side Ron shifted out from behind the big black wing so he could see. "Um… yes, they're allowed, so long as a teacher's supervising and there's no lethal or potentially lethal spells used."

"That actually sounds all right," Harry said. "What do you think, Draco? We could ask Professor Flitwick to supervise, because he's not either of our Head of House."

"And he's a well-known duelist," Hermione supplied.

"Hold on, hold on," Dean said, from the other side of the table. "A duel?"

The tall First-year blinked. "Like… knights and stuff?"

"I was actually reading about knights having one," Harry related.

"What's this about a duel?" Professor Flitwick asked, surprising everyone. "Mr. Potter, I understand you're involved?"

"Yes, Sir," Harry agreed. "Draco challenged me to one, and I've suggested we have it outside after lunch."

Draco looked venomously at Harry, but it had all become a bit too public for him to back out.

"All right," he agreed. "Who's your second?"

"I'll do it!" Ron said promptly.

"And you, Mr. Malfoy?" Flitwick went on.

"...Crabbe," Draco decided, after some consideration. "You'd better show up, Potter."

* * *

"Why didn't you tell Professor Flitwick that he challenged you to a duel _after curfew?"_ Hermione asked. "He's trying to make you break the rules!"

Thinking about it, Harry realized that was probably true.

"Well, he'd have broken the rules as well, if he showed up," Harry replied. "Or, rather, he'd have broken the rules. If it was against the rules I wouldn't have done it."

"Really?" Ron blinked. "Why not?"

"If you're going to break the rules, then you have to have a good reason for it," Harry answered. "I don't _like_ Draco, but with what he's already said I don't really think he's going to like me no matter what I do."

He shrugged his wings. "It's not like I cared what my cousin thought about me."

"Wait, Harry," Dean frowned. "Didn't you tell me before you used to fly up on the school roof to read books?"

"Yeah, but only if Dudley was going to try and steal them off me," Harry replied. "After the time he kicked a library book to bits and blamed me for it I thought it was better to just keep them out of the way."

"Your cousin sounds awful," Neville said, speaking up for the first time that lunch.

"It kind of depends what sort of day he's having," Harry shrugged. "I think a lot of people are like that."

* * *

One happy ending to the _Malloreon_ behind him, Harry headed out to the lawn in front of the castle after lunch.

There was quite a crowd, and he felt a bit nervous, but Ron had pointed out that they hadn't actually learned any dangerous spells yet so the most that Draco should be able to do was shoot sparks (and the Stinging Jinx, a very weak spell that Professor Quirrell had explained to them in Defence earlier that week).

Professor Flitwick was waiting, and so were Draco and Vincent, and the little Charms teacher smiled at them both.

"So!" he began. "Is this a recreational duel or a challenge?"

"A challenge, I think," Harry said. "Draco challenged me."

"That's quite all right," the Professor said brightly. "And is the dispute one that can only be solved by a duel, or does one of you want to back down?"

"I don't want to back down," Draco insisted.

"And I'm not quite sure what the issue _is_," Harry admitted. "But I don't mind having a duel."

"All right!" Professor Flitwick repeated. "Good enough for me. Now, the rules are as follows – no body contact, the duel is over when one side has conceded or when I determine enough time has elapsed, and because this is a duel on school grounds no lethal spells should be cast. The duel will not begin until I say so."

"All right," Harry agreed. "Are there rules about where we go?"

"You are not to leave the school grounds," Professor Flitwick said. "Now, please bow."

Harry bowed, closing his eyes, and Draco shouted something he didn't _quite_ make out.

"Mr. Malfoy!" Professor Flitwick said sharply. "I did not instruct you to begin!"

"What happened?" Harry asked, looking up again. Professor Flitwick had his wand out and pointed at Draco, and the young Slytherin was looking shocked.

"Malfoy cast a spell at you!" Ron provided. "It sounded like the knockback jinx, but it just bounced off your scales!"

"Mr. Malfoy has wilfully broken the rules of the duel," Professor Flitwick went on. "He loses. Congratulations, Mr. Potter."

"What?" Draco demanded. "But he didn't do _anything!"_

"Which means he's followed instructions a lot better than you have, Mr. Malfoy," Professor Flitwick told him, his customary good cheer returning quickly. "If you wish to argue that Mr. Potter should have to defeat you to claim victory and Mr. Potter agrees, you can of course continue?"

Draco clenched his fist, then his gaze dropped.

"Excellent!" Professor Flitwick said. "And if anyone else would like to take part in a practice duel, please contact me and I can organize pairs."

* * *

Harry felt a bit bemused for the rest of the day.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Charlie Weasley is a dragon geek.

Draco Malfoy is having trouble trying to deal with an amiable dragon.


	9. Dragons Attend Class Without Problems

It transpired that the book club's first meeting was just about meeting one another – there were about thirty students present – and then discussing what they were going to be reading before the next one in a week. There were plenty of suggestions, with Harry deliberating for a long time before opting to raise _Equal Rites_ as an option and Neville instead suggesting a wizarding novel Harry wasn't familiar with.

Hermione didn't come to a conclusion about what to give as an example, which she was told was all right – she could come up with one later – and a quick spell to pick one randomly landed on the book suggested by a Hufflepuff Fifth-Year called _Around Africa By Broom_.

It wasn't a fiction book, which was about roughly a coin-toss based on what everyone had suggested, and it was obviously a book about someone magical. That was basically the point, finding new books and reading them, and the result left Harry quite pleased – though admittedly wondering whether the school library really had thirty copies of _Around Africa By Broom_.

* * *

The third week at Hogwarts wasn't quite as eventful as the second. No duels developed involving Harry, no important objects were lost (and Neville was able to make good use of his Remembrall now he knew how to do it) and relatives of Harry's friends failed to show up out of nowhere for purposes of natural history.

In fact, somewhat to Harry's surprise, the routine of class at Hogwarts actually settled down into a routine. Their Charms lessons gradually elaborated on the theory of Charms, their Transfiguration lessons continued slowly expanding their repertoire of Transfigurations, Potions class continued to involve making Potions (to nobody's surprise except for perhaps Neville, who entered every lesson expecting to make some horrible mistake) and homework joined the schedule at one end and was completed at the other.

Harry found a copy of the _Around Africa_ book in the Ravenclaw library and read it on Tuesday evening before Astronomy class, finding the style a bit odd at times but enjoying the mention of Translation Toffee (to cope with all the different languages the witch met along the way) and how the tent she carried in her backpack every day and set up whenever she couldn't find somewhere to stay was 'only two bedrooms'.

* * *

"...doubtless you wish to know why it is that some Charms last only a very short time, or only while the witch or wizard is concentrating on it, and why others last a very long time indeed!" Professor Flitwick lectured, a week or so into October.

He waved his wand, and four pieces of chalk rose up to sketch out diagrams. "It is because of the pattern of the magic involved. A charm which is to last only a very short time is provided with a certain amount of magic and then that is all there is, and the spell is not tied off – it's a bit like a balloon with the nozzle left open, because it goes shooting off and it's very fast while it's using it up, but once it's done then there's no air left. An example of this would be the Stunning charm."

Professor Flitwick then drew a slightly different diagram. "The second type of charm is one where you give it a task, and enough magic to _complete_ the task. This is very similar, except that if you do not give enough magic it will not work instead of simply being underpowered. This is like the _Summoning_ charm, and most common spells of this type, if cast correctly, will call upon enough magic to actually complete the task."

Harry wrote busily with one paw, using the other to brace himself against the desk. He did his best to include the diagrams, as well, because they weren't quite the same as the ones in _Magical Theory_ and these seemed to explain the whole thing better.

"Then there is the kind of charm where it lasts until the wizard stops casting it," the Charms teacher said. "Such as the _Levitation_ charm. These spells are constantly using up magic to do what they do, but they are also constantly being resupplied with magic."

Professor Flitwick paused, and winked. "Of course, if you are using one of these spells in a duel, you should watch out! The spell can be ended, like puncturing a balloon, and all the magic will escape – and if you lose concentration this can happen, and it will stop it happening."

That point made, he moved on to the next type. "Then there is what is also known as the _enchantment_, which is using a Charm on a permanent or mostly permanent basis. This is often much harder than other types of Charms, and it involves pushing a certain amount of magic into the object and tying the spell off. It is then like a balloon which has had a knot tied in it, so it will stay there until enough magic escapes that the spell stops working. But since the knot is tied, this can take a very long time – it depends on how much magic has been put in and how good the knot is."

Harry raised his paw, and Professor Flitwick called on him. "Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"So does that mean that you could change a spell that's one type so it's another type?" he asked. "Such as… making a summoning enchantment?"

"A very good question!" Flitwick said, delighted. "Two points to Gryffindor, I think! Yes, that is very possible, Mr. Potter – you could do it either by changing how you cast the spell, or by making it a different spell, though both are quite difficult to do and the second would most likely require Arithmantic calculations to see how to make it work."

He waved his wand again, and _The Flying Book Of Flying_ came rising up to the level of his desk.

"This is an example of quite a simple charm that you'll all be learning in the next few weeks, which is _Wingardium Levoisa _when cast like that," Professor Flitwick explained. "But when it is cast as an _enchantment_, it has quite a different incantation and it will last upwards of fifty years – though it is also much more difficult to cast successfully, and a wizard who gets the spell wrong may find themselves levitating five feet in the air until they can break their own spell. And, you see, a simple _Finite_ will not work nearly so well on an enchantment, because the spell is already contained so well!"

Terry Boot raised his hand this time, and asked whether there was a kind of enchantment that didn't run down _at all_.

"I fear that is not for me to tell, Mr. Boot," Professor Flitwick said. "That would be the provenance of Professor Babbling's Runes class – the making of truly permanent spells is largely a historical technique from before the wide use of the wand, because a witch or wizard with a wand can do almost anything better than a rune crafter. It is easier to re-cast the enchantment once every so often and live with that than to spend the effort it would take to get all the runes _just so_. But it is a fine question, Mr. Boot – two points to Ravenclaw for spotting that gap!"

* * *

One morning Hedwig brought them all five copies of a four-page monograph, described as being by Charles Weasley with assistance from 'H. Granger, N. Longbottom, H. Potter, D. Thomas, R. Weasley'. It summarized a lot of what they'd discussed, though not all of it, and also mentioned how Charlie had followed up their conversation from September by doing some experiments on dragons in the Romanian preserve to see whether some of Harry's unusual properties were truly unusual or just the result of his upbringing.

There was a footnote about the response of a Ukranian Ironbelly fed a pile of leaves slathered in blood, which had resulted in the dragon in question being quite sick, and another about an incident where a young Romanian Longhorn about ten feet in length had merely left dents in a metal plate when induced to bite it. Then there was a spirited attempt to see how spells interacted with dragons of the appropriate size, which _did_ confirm that dragon wing could block magic; the subsection also apologized to one Adrian Sala who had been mildly scorched during this testing.

"This is pretty cool," Dean said, looking at the second page; his sketches of Harry's wings and mouth and tail had all been enchanted, and they moved with wings-flapping and mouth-yawning and tail-twitching as he watched. The drawing of Harry's body as a whole moved as well, loping along before taking flight, and it swept off the page entirely before flying back around and landing again. "I wonder if I can show this to my mum."

"She knows about magic already, right?" Ron asked. "Got to to send you here. I think that's allowed, as long as you're careful about it; we've got a second cousin who's an accountant, but she's not allowed to bring her husband or her kids to any of the family meet-ups so it's kind of awkward."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, my mum and dad know. I don't think my sisters do though…"

"I can't really imagine what that's like," Neville said. "Everyone I've ever met has known about magic, and Long – and my house is big enough that my grandmother and my great-uncle can use magic without worrying about showing off."

"I think that must be the opposite of what happened to me, then," Harry noted. "Maybe it's because I flew from home to school and back, and – well, basically everywhere – but as far as I can remember Hagrid was the very first person who could actually _see_ me as a dragon."

"There's got to be quite a lot of Muggles who know, surely," was Hermione's contribution. "Everyone who's muggle-born, or muggle-raised, their parents or caretakers would know, and a lot more people are half-blood. And that's not even getting into the people who are squibs."

"I'm almost a squib," Neville mumbled.

"Come on, Nev, you're not," Ron told him, clapping him on the shoulder. "Unless I am as well, and Seamus. We have trouble with the class work, that's different."

"Oi!" Seamus grumbled.

"Well, for Seamus it's just that he doesn't bother," Ron amended.

"Oi!" Seamus said again.

"If you don't want them joking about you, do better in class," Parvati advised, waving her hand.

* * *

Two days later, Harry was called up to the Headmaster's office in the afternoon. The password, it turned out, was 'Cauldron Cake', which Harry hadn't even considered and he had to admit that that kind of password was certainly effective.

The inside of the office was quite amazing. There were portraits all over the walls, as magical as the rest of them in Hogwarts, and little silvery things spinning and whistling on a desk behind where the Headmaster was sat. There was a large bird with brilliant red feathers and a golden tail, as well – what could only be a phoenix, looking at Harry with as much interest as the dragon had for him.

"Ah, Mr. Potter, it's so good to see you!" Professor Dumbledore said, with a cheerful smile. "I am glad you could take time out of your busy schedule to meet me."

Slightly puzzled by that comment, Harry approached the chair that Professor Dumbledore indicated and sat in it. It was big enough, and soft enough, that he could sort of recline back into it if he was careful to furl his wings and arch his back.

"Would you like a sherbet lemon, Mr. Potter?" Professor Dumbledore suggested, proffering a bowl, and Harry took one between his talons. He wasn't at all sure that Professor Dumbledore was what he'd been expecting, even with what he'd said at the Sorting Feast, but there wasn't any reason to refuse a kind offer of a sweet.

Popping it into his mouth, Harry rolled it around on his tongue. It tasted all right, at first, and Dumbledore smiled at him – then the hard case released the sherbet, which fizzed on his tongue, and Harry coughed in surprise before sneezing out a bright yellow fireball which rose ten feet into the air.

Drawing breath to apologize, Harry then sneezed again, and again – each gasped _achoo_ sending a ball of flame into the air, and making the portraits all run for cover outside their frames.

One of the fireballs went towards the bookshelf, and a blur of what looked like glass intercepted it – exploding into a dozen pieces, then reforming quickly into a small glass alembic on Professor Dumbledore's desk.

When the fit had finally subsided, Harry cautiously took a deep breath and then let it hiss out. "I'm… so sorry, Professor-"

"Dear me, no, no harm has been done, my dear boy," Professor Dumbledore assured him. "And, please – Dumbledore will serve quite well. When one has so many titles as I it can be wearying to hear them all the time."

Dumbledore (as Harry was to call him) inspected the bowl of sherbet lemons, waving his wand a little, then put them away in his desk. "It seems we have finally found a substance which defeats your formidable constitution, Mr. Potter – the common-or-garden sherbet lemon."

"Harry's fine," Harry requested, still feeling embarrassed about his overreaction.

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced. "We are getting on like a house on fire – though, of course, I would prefer my office remain unignited."

He smiled faintly. "Now, I believe that Rubeus has told me that you would like to go off the grounds to visit a Muggle town. Under normal circumstances, of course, students cannot leave the castle or grounds without special permission. Would you be able to explain to me why it is you want to visit a Muggle town?"

"Mostly that I'd like to get some more books," Harry told him.

"Books?" Dumbledore repeated, still smiling faintly. "I have the opposite problem. I have entirely too many books, and entirely too many people think the best thing to get me for my birthday or for Christmas is another book. I've had to resort to letting Madam Pince steal them from me in exchange for a negative library fine."

The idea of having more books than he knew what to do with was a nice one to Harry, who couldn't really see why he'd give them away – unless maybe he had several copies of the same book? Or if it was to friends, perhaps, which was almost like still having them yourself.

"They're books that the library doesn't have," Harry explained. "I looked, and the Ravenclaw library has some wizarding novels, but there aren't any Muggle novels."

"Ah, I see!" Dumbledore exclaimed. "Well, that seems like an entirely admirable reason to me, Harry, but I will have to ask you a few questions. Firstly, you are doubtless aware that it is not possible to Apparate inside Hogwarts, even assuming you have learned to do so, and secondly that first-year students such as yourself are not permitted their own broomsticks?"

Harry felt like he was starting to get a hang of how Dumbledore thought, now, and spread his wings. "I was thinking of flying? Though I'm not sure where the closest town is."

"Yes, I see," Dumbledore said, nodding along. "I'm sure that there will be a map somewhere – not of Hogwarts, for sadly Hogwarts is Unplottable and so no map can show where it is, but of the area in which it is believed that Hogwarts probably is."

He considered for a moment. "Yes, and I believe that if you have managed to avoid being caught as a dragon for several years in the middle of Surrey then I am sure that you will be able to avoid being caught as a dragon for a few visits to a Scottish bookshop. Very well, then, Harry, I see no reason that you should not – so long as you _do_ avoid being caught, that is, and so long as it does not affect your school work."

"I'm sure it will affect my school work, Sir," Harry replied. "I enjoy reading books, and so I'll feel better."

"An excellent point, Harry," Dumbledore smiled. "Oh, and before you go, one more matter."

Harry tilted his head.

"Forgive an old man for his lack of memory, but did you say precisely _how_ it was that you came to be a dragon?" Dumbledore asked.

"I don't really remember," Harry answered. "It was a long time ago."

"Of course, of course," Dumbledore agreed readily. "I fully understand. And do you feel _happy_ as a dragon?"

"It's how I've been for years, Sir," Harry told him. "It's hard to imagine how I'd get on without wings, or a tail, or any of the other dragoney bits. I think that even if I _could_ be turned into a human I probably wouldn't want to."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "Thank you, Harry. If you wish to talk in future, my office door is always open."

He paused. "Actually, my office door is usually shut, but I am sure that Professors McGonagall or Flitwick will be happy to provide you with the password. If not, then please do send me an owl."

* * *

Armed with Dumbledore's permission, Harry sourced a map from the library – which took twenty minutes of looking before finally turning up an old Ordnance Survey map from about 1953 – and deduced that his best bet was probably Fort William, a town located near what looked like a quite distinctive area of coastline.

With that out of the way, Harry could plan his journey. Taking his backpack was obvious, as was leaving his school robes behind to blend in, and with how Dean had asked him to be present at the Sunday morning Art club as a model that meant the only date that would really work was the Saturday – a day with no classes and no other commitments.

That still left the biggest concern, which was that Harry actually had no Muggle money left aside from a few ten-pence pieces that had been excess from his railway sandwich. The bag of gold in his trunk was quite well-stocked, but it was all Wizarding money and he doubted that a bookshop owner in Fort William would take Sickles. (Or, for that matter, a sweet store.)

After thinking about the puzzle overnight, and through the morning Potions lesson, Harry decided the best thing to do would be to ask Percy Weasley. The Gryffindor prefect had taken his mistake seriously and been spending quite a lot of time in the Gryffindor common room, usually working on some essay or other and adjusting a carefully-written timetable to suit – but still there to be asked. In fact, he was spending so much time there or in the library that Harry was sure he was either skipping classes or not sleeping, but Percy didn't seem especially tired or flustered so he assumed the older boy had it handled.

When Harry asked the question, after lunch on Friday, Percy put down his quill (he'd been working on columns of equations which looked like they were probably Arithmancy) and thought about it for several seconds.

"So you have plenty of galleons, but you need pounds," he said. "Well, you can't really go to Gringotts, so – I know."

He looked up at the clock to check the time. "I can't remember Professor Burbage's class hours, but if you check her office every hour or so you should catch her. She's the Muggle Studies professor – if anyone in the castle has pounds, it'll be her. Look on the south side of the fourth floor, her office is opposite the statue of Winston Churchill."

Harry blinked. "I didn't know Winston Churchill was a wizard."

"Oh, he wasn't," Percy said. "But she _is_ the Muggle Studies professor."

* * *

"Are you sure this is a good idea, mate?" Ron asked, as Harry waited in the common room for another chance to see if Professor Burbage was in. "You might be seen!"

"I haven't been seen before," Harry replied. "And that was flying over London."

"Oh, yeah, that odd thing where Muggles can't see you," Ron remembered. "But still… are you sure you'll be able to get back to Hogwarts? It's kind of hard to find, that's the point."

"Yeah, that is a good point," Harry admitted. "Well… I'm pretty good at finding my way around, or I think I am, but maybe if there's magic..."

He thought about it, then smiled suddenly. "Wait here," he asked Ron, and loped upstairs – dodging around a sixth-year on his way – before sliding to a halt next to his bed. He dug into his trunk to locate a quill, two pieces of parchment and two envelopes, then hurried back downstairs.

Rejoining Ron, he wrote out a quick letter about picking up some sweets to try, then folded it up in an envelope and addressed it to Albus Dumbledore.

"Here's the idea," he explained, giving Ron the other envelope. "If I'm not back by, um… three in the afternoon? You send me a letter asking if I'm okay. Hedwig can find me, then I can send this letter to Dumbledore and follow her home."

"Brilliant!" Ron decided. "Owls can definitely get to Hogwarts – that's brilliant, mate!"

"I'll do my best not to need it, though," Harry added.

* * *

This time, his meeting with Professor Burbage actually happened, and after explaining the situation she was happy to help. In exchange for ten galleons, she gave him fifty pounds of Muggle money from her collection – which Harry remembered was about what the conversion was – and asked him to write her a quick report on how the expedition went for her to read.

Navigation, destination, money and permission all sorted out, Harry spent the last few hours of Friday evening making sure all his homework was properly done and then got an early night – planning to set off just after an early breakfast, to give himself as much time as possible.

* * *

Then it rained all day.

* * *

Unwilling to risk a flight to go and buy books in the sweeping, crackling thunderstorm which lashed the grounds of Hogwarts, Harry instead spent the day finishing the latest book club assignment – a Wizarding novel from about seventy years ago, about a family with a witch mother and a muggle father living in France during the First World War and trying to cope with the need for secrecy against their hopes that the father of the family would come back alive.

It was a bit depressing in places, but it was a good story, and with the storm lashing the windows of Gryffindor Tower – and Ron and Dean arguing over the difference between _Impedimenta_ and _Flipendo_ in their Defence homework, and Hermione practising a spell she'd looked up, and Neville quietly reading the same book in an armchair – Harry found that he didn't really mind that his plan had been spoiled by the weather.

He could always go shopping next weekend, after all.

* * *

Days began to go past faster, lessons and homework and free time slipping away to the flow of the week. Sunday saw Harry posing for art club (though the Prefect who was present managed to convince the club _not_ to pressure Harry into posing with a miniature suit of armour) and then the discussion in book club – along with the next book being assigned, which was a non-fiction book called _Centaurs of Caledonia_ about the long history of the centaurs of Scotland.

Monday's lessons had Professor McGonagall telling them all about the principle of similarity with a spell transfiguration, and how a poorly cast transfiguration spell would leave the result having some of the properties of the original object – while a spell cast well with good visualization could customize the result quite far from how it had started. The example used was turning a teacup into a rat, where a not-very-successful casting would leave the rat patterned exactly the same as the teacup while an excellent casting could result in a rat patterned however one chose.

The week's Herbology classes saw them learning about the ways to tell apart soils – some magical plants preferring sandier soils and others more inclined to the loamy, or to stranger combinations – and which went better with what kinds of mulch. It was a mucky lesson, but needed, and as Harry washed his claws after one he smiled at how much Neville was enjoying the course.

History of Magic was focused on the Statute of Secrecy at the moment, about the period when witches and wizards went into hiding, and it made Harry wonder what would happen if someone tried to burn him at the stake. (Based on how easily it was that he could touch things in a hot frying pan, he thought it was probably 'not much'.)

Then there was Astronomy, where they were talking about how it was that the Moon could orbit the Earth but the Earth orbit the Sun and the two of them look so similar, while all the other things that orbited the Sun looked so much smaller.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was still the weakest course as far as Harry was concerned, which was a pity because the subject matter was interesting, and talking with Second-Years and Third-Years gave him some idea about what the classes had been like under the last two teachers. It seemed as though Quirrell was actually an _improvement_ in terms of teaching quality, though the other two had been easier to understand.

The Flying Lessons were moving on to some of the more advanced bits, about how to make a broom dive quickly or dive slowly, and Harry's own project of stabilizing himself mid-flight when using both a broom and his own wings was – slowly – advancing. Madam Hooch had taken him aside after the last class and told him that she had an idea to try out in future, which was a good sign, and even Neville was now confident enough to fly in a somewhat wobbly circle. He'd never be a Quidditch player, or he wouldn't be unless he improved in a really big way _and_ got into actually enjoying flying, but he _was_ doing well enough to get by.

As for Potions, they were going about as well as they had been. Professor Snape was quite ready to tell people off for even the most minor of mistakes, but Daphne and Harry were forming quite a good team. Ron and Dean had occasional trouble with some of the instructions, and Harry had winced at the tongue-lashing his friends had got when they'd mixed up the ingredients of an antidote to Manticore venom.

Admittedly, since the cauldron had trembled and sent a plume of acrid greenish smoke rising up to billow off the ceiling, it had been fairly obvious something had gone wrong. Apparently they'd been mixed up because the instructions on the board had told them to add the essence of giant hogweed _before_ the puffskein fur, while the book instructions had had it afterwards, and the result had been adding it twice and a small explosion.

Then it was another Saturday, this time with the air crisp and clear, and Harry finally set off for Fort William.

* * *

After about an hour of flying, most of it higher than the nearby mountains (or were they hills? Harry knew that above a certain height a hill turned into a mountain, but he didn't have an altitude measurer) Harry landed on a peak overlooking a broad inlet and dug the map out of his bag.

It looked like the inlet was the right shape, though the town nearby was quite a bit bigger than he expected Fort William to look based on the map. That was probably because of how old the map was, though, and Harry double-checked that there were no other similar-looking inlets nearby before putting the map away again.

Spreading his wings and walking forwards, past the crest of the hill(?) and towards the steep drop-off, Harry waited until the strong breeze blowing up the side of the slope was making his wings ripple and crackle before flexing them and taking flight.

Rather than immediately descend down into Fort William, he instead used the rising air to gain height while he still had an idea of the direction Hogwarts was in. It wasn't as easy as he'd hoped, and he had to flap quite hard once the rising air had gone, but ultimately Harry spotted Hogwarts castle against the horizon before giving it up and gliding back down towards the town he'd flown so far to visit.

His wings ached a bit, but no more than they did after he'd flown from Little Whingeing to London, and he was expecting a few hours' rest before he had to fly back.

* * *

A dragon landed on the high street, and nobody noticed.

Furling his wings, Harry looked around – confirming that nobody was staring at him – then hopped to the side of the pedestrian street and started looking up and down to see what there was. He could see a lot of outdoors-equipment shops, and food shops, and more than a few places which were all about being Scottish, but his first real focus was to see if there was a bookshop… or, failing that, a library.

Then… a sweetshop sounded nice, to get something for Professor Dumbledore as a thank-you.

* * *

"Afternoon," someone nodded, stopping to talk to Harry and adjusting a massive backpack. "You planning on heading up Ben Nevis?"

"Not really," Harry replied. "I don't do all that much walking. I'm just visiting."

"Well, to each his own," the hiker replied amiably.

As the tourist walked off, Harry took a bite out of his sandwich.

His shopping was more-or-less done. He'd only spent about half the money in his bag, largely because he didn't want to use it all up on the first trip, but he _had_ picked up a few new books along with copies of books he'd read before but hadn't had the money left to get before coming to Hogwarts.

The biggest prize had been the totally unexpected discovery of a brand new _Pern_ book, _All the Weyrs of Pern_, which was carefully wrapped up in his backpack along with his other purchases and inside a pair of plastic bags in case there was any rain. That alone had made the trip worth it, and Harry occasionally had to stop his tail twitching in pleasure when it bumped into chairs or bushes and made them move.

After those, and also picking up a Muggle astronomy book in case it helped with Astronomy class, the other thing Harry had done was to go to a sweet shop. A lot of the shops on the high street that sold sweets sold specifically Highland sweets, things like fudge, that Harry guessed were mostly meant for tourists… but a bit of searching had revealed a much more conventional sweet shop, and Harry had picked up a dozen different things that sounded interesting.

The rest of the sandwich vanished, along with the rubbish (Harry had never really seen the point in unwrapping a sandwich, because to him it just had two layers instead of one) and Harry nodded his head a little as he went through the list of things he wanted to do.

He'd been to the book shop, and to the sweet shop as well… he'd had something for lunch, and looked in on a couple of other ships but hadn't got anything there.

That meant he could go to the library with a clear conscience.

Wings twitching slightly in eagerness, Harry hopped down from the wall he'd been sitting on, snagged his backpack, and loped down the high street to reach the town library.

* * *

The weather had become cloudy by the time Harry got back to Hogwarts, and as he circled over the castle before coming down to land he noticed that there was Quidditch practice going on.

It sounded like there was a lot of shouting going on, and he wondered if that meant the Gryffindor Quidditch Team was having trouble. If he remembered properly Charlie Weasley had been the Seeker and he'd left, and one of the Chasers had left as well…

Shrugging it off, he decided to just land through the Owlery. It would mean he didn't have to fly up the grand staircase, which was all good.

* * *

"So this is a pear drop," Ron said, inspecting it closely.

He poked it with his wand, and it fizzed slightly. "Ah, so that's what they do!"

"What?" Dean asked. "No, mate, they just taste sweet and pear-y. That's because you poked it with your wand."

"But I wasn't trying to cast a spell?" Ron asked, puzzled. Then the pear drop rose into the air and exploded into a cloud of sweet-smelling mist, which drew a long-suffering sigh from Hermione and a few cheers from the rest of the common room.

"Muggle sweets are mostly a bit less exciting than Wizard ones," Harry explained. "But there's some which are different – I don't know if there are any magic sweets which are like sherbet."

"Wait, you got some sherbet?" Dean asked.

"That doesn't sound like a good idea," Neville said softly. "Not after what you said happened in Professor Dumbledore's office."

"I thought maybe he'd like them," Harry explained. "And maybe if I get used to it I won't blow something up if it happens again."

He put the astronomy book on the table. "I got this, too."

"...now I come to think of it, we don't actually _have_ an astronomy textbook, do we?" Hermione asked, as Ron cracked the book open to see what was in it. "Good work, Harry, that's going to help a lot."

"I think you got the wrong book, Harry," Ron said. "This says that Muggles have sent somebody called Galileo to visit Jupiter, but even I know that Galileo lived in Italy hundreds of years ago."

Hermione hid a smile. "That's a space probe named after him, Ron. It was launched two years ago."

Ron slowly lowered the book, staring at his friend, then flipped through it.

"Muggles have been to the moon?"

"Nineteen sixty-nine," Hermione supplied. "My mum and dad both watched it on the TV."

Flipflipflip.

"A giant crater in Mexico?"

"Oh, that must be a very new book!" Hermione said, pleased. "Well done, Harry, that's only been in the science magazines in the last year or so – I read about it in Dad's copy of _Nature_."

"We are _so_ different," Dean chuckled.

"I just asked for a good astronomy book," Harry admitted. "I don't really know enough to tell."

"What in Merlin's name is this!?"

Hermione leaned over to look at the illustration. "Oh, that's just a picture of a spaceship. Not a real one, it's just used to make the picture more interesting – it's the one from _Star Trek_."

She turned a few pages back. "That's real, though. It's been having all sorts of problems."

Ron looked up at Hermione, then back at the Hubble Space Telescope.

"...is this what Muggles can do because they don't have sweets that run away?"

"I think a lot of it is because there's a lot more Muggles," Harry said. "They come up with a lot more ideas, because there's more of them, and then they do their best to make them come true. So there were stories about going to space, and then that's what they did."

He rummaged in his backpack and unwrapped _All the Weyrs_. "Maybe I should think about doing this?"

They all looked at the cover, which showed a white dragon and a much smaller golden one inside a room, with the golden one pressing buttons. Out of the window of the room an entire planet was visible, green and blue and whorled with cloud.

"I always thought those books were fantasy books, like the other ones you like," Hermione said. "But suddenly there's a spaceship?"

"Well, dragons are real," Harry said, shrugging. "And even if she doesn't know that, they're dragons on another planet – they aren't actually fantasy books, it's a bit complicated."

Ron was still staring at a photograph of the Space Shuttle.

* * *

Professor Burbage was delighted to hear how the trip had gone, especially when Harry handed in his write-up of what had happened. It wasn't anything especially sophisticated, but he had listed off all the shops he'd gone into, as well as how many people were in town to walk because Fort William had a train station.

"The really fascinating thing about it is that it's a town with so many people in it!" the Professor smiled. "It's big enough that it really shows how many Muggles there are, but it's small enough that you can visit all of it – most Wizards tend to live in quite small villages or out in the countryside, and those that don't can spend all their life in London without ever leaving it."

Harry had the feeling that if he did Muggle Studies he'd probably learn more about Wizards than about Muggles, but it was a good point.

* * *

"Malfoy's got to be planning something," Ron said, a few days later, as they worked on Transfiguration homework – giving examples of the spells in their standard spellbook which were the most similar to various things they were told to do. Turning a tortoise into a rat looked like it was best to go tortoise-to-teapot, and then base the next step off teacup-to-rat, for example, and it meant lots of checking back and forth. "That duel made him look silly, and I don't trust him."

"I don't know," Harry shrugged. "When Draco ran into me in the hallway, yesterday, he asked how I felt about Halloween. I said that I was looking forward to getting sweets, because Dudley was the only one who got them."

"But-" Ron began, then subsided when Hermione waved her hand at him to make him quiet down. "But you can't let him get away with it, Harry."

"Get away with what?" Harry asked.

"He's – uh – I bet he was trying to make a point about, you know, what happened when… when You-Know-Who died," Ron elaborated. "About what happened to your parents."

Harry frowned. "Oh, maybe. I didn't think of that… is there a transfiguration spell which turns a feather duster into a paintbrush? That would help here."

"Oh, hold on, I think I saw one of those," Dean volunteered, flipping through his own copy. "Uh… there."

Harry wrote down the words of that spell, looked at his spell-chain, then frowned. "I think I must have copied one of these down wrong."

"Let me see?" Hermione asked, comparing the spell chain to her own – all finished already, of course. "There's a difference there… hold on… oh, I see. No, that spell won't fit there, I think you copied the wrong one down."

Sighing, Harry took the paper back and crossed out the offending spell. Finding the page again, he saw that he'd put down the wrong one on the page – instead of turning a duck into a pillow, he'd put in one which turned a weasel into a wastebasket.

"That's better," he said, substituting the correct one in. "Thanks, Hermione."

"You're welcome," Hermione told him, sounding pleased.

* * *

Professor Sinistra was quietly impressed with the astronomy book, and Harry also got a thank-you note from Professor Dumbledore a few days after that which told him that the Headmaster very much enjoyed the black-jacks and the flying saucers Harry had sent him.

Harry didn't really agree on the flying saucers – the one time he'd tried one he'd discovered that the sherbet fizzed enough to make him cough, just like the lemon sherbets – but he was glad that Dumbleore liked them, not least because it made him feel like the journey had been worth it for more than one reason.

Then it was more than halfway through his first term, and Halloween rolled around. Charms class saw them learning to make objects float into the air – it was harder with bigger objects, but not _much_ harder, but they still started with feathers.

Professor Flitwick explained to them all how it was much easier to make something float if you thought it _should_ float, and a feather was naturally very light and floaty, so it was easy for a new spellcaster to make it float – it wasn't that you didn't have to cast the spell with the right words, because you did, but that the more you _thought_ the spell could work the more forgiving it was of little mistakes.

A wizard _could_ cast a spell with the words and the wand movement without even knowing what it was meant to do at all, or they could cast it with just an effort of will without saying the words or moving their wand, but all three together worked best… and, as soon as someone got it (Hermione, naturally) and proved that it _could_ be done, most of the rest of the class followed over the next half hour.

Harry mostly wondered what would happen if he cast the spell while _flying_. Would it mean he'd levitate something a little bit and then pull it along with him as he flew at high speed?

* * *

Then, after their other lessons (and homework), and after their things were stowed away in their rooms, came the feast.

For some reason, this involved a lot of live bats, and his friends laughed at how obviously Harry was visibly restraining himself from leaping into the air to catch the black flying things. There was plenty of food, as well, though with how much Wizards liked pumpkins normally it was a bit hard to tell the difference from a typical meal… until the desserts, which were all kinds of bizarre but very tasty combinations. Like the fudge torte, or a pie which contained within it twenty-four chocolate frogs, or even a strange kind of trifle with blood oranges in it that was both fruity and sweet at the same time.

Compared to his time at the Dursleys, when his aunt and uncle had absolutely refused any suggestion of trick-or-treating by _Dudley_, let alone Harry – probably because of the magical associations – and simply stuffed their son with chocolate while more-or-less ignoring Harry, Halloween 1991 was the best one Harry could remember and stood out from several quite boring ones. (When he thought about it after Malfoy's point from a couple of weeks ago, Harry knew that the Halloween ten years ago was probably the most memorable one of them all for older wizards, but he'd been too young to remember it so it didn't count.)

* * *

AN:

* * *

Oh, look, nothing important happens at Halloween.

Now you know we're operating far from canon.

Also, this fic now has a TVTropes page! It's shiny and new and doesn't have much in it yet.


	10. Suddenly There's Action And Stuff

At the start of the first flying lesson of November, Madam Hooch came over to Harry with a bundle.

"Here we go, Mr. Potter," she said, putting the bundle down and rolling it out. Harry looked on with interest, ears twitching, as a pair of very similar looking brooms rolled out.

"I've got an idea about that instability of yours," Madam Hooch explained. "These are old Swiftsticks, very resilient brooms, not hard used but they're old enough that they're not worth much any more. But they're durable enough they should be nice and even."

"I'm not sure I understand," Harry admitted.

"Well, I got hold of these from a contact of mine at Quality Quidditch Supplies," Madam Hooch told him briskly. "Took a week to get time with old Filius to alter the charms, too – the cushioning charm's been turned down and we've added a sticking charm in their place. Wings out."

Harry complied, and Madam Hooch put one of the two Swiftsticks under his wing – just below the long join where it met his body, where it wouldn't impinge on a full flap of his wings.

"Stick," she said, and it did – probably sticking firmly to his durable robes, rather than to his hide. The other one went under his other wing and stuck on the same way, and she stepped back to check on her work.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Harry asked.

"I had Septima work out the numbers with me, don't worry," Madam Hooch assured him. "You're good enough at controlling brooms, it's just that you're not used to balancing a single source of power. If this works we might see about getting you used to a single broom, but this ought to work out better for now."

She raised a hand in caution. "Remember! You'll have to control the brooms the way we've been discussing without leaning on them. This still isn't going to be easy. And if you have trouble, tell them to 'unstick' and they will – they're attached to one another now."

"Right," Harry said, looking at first one broom and then the other. They had little serial numbers engraved on the head of the broom, both of them four-digit numbers beginning with a 5, and he wondered just _how_ old they were before shrugging it off.

If there was anybody in the entire _school_ it was safe to experiment like this with, it was probably him.

Madam Hooch turned to give instructions to the rest of the flying students for a few minutes, telling the ones in the first-class (mostly Wizarding children used to flying brooms, but not all of them) to practice flying in formation in small groups, while the ones in the second-class were to keep working on flying straight and level.

"Up you go, Mr. Potter," she added, and Harry crouched before jumping into the air with a sweep of his wings.

At first, it felt just like his normal flights. Then he did that funny little mental thing which he'd learned over the last couple of months was how you made a broomstick start going, and it was very different all of a sudden.

Doing his best to keep himself from simply surging off into the distance, Harry kept his wings spread and tried to think of it like diving, and that helped – he lowered his neck a little, flexing his wings back, trying to use them to control his flight rather than push.

Then it seemed to click, all of a sudden, and he banked around to the right – going wider than he expected, but definitely flying with most of his momentum coming from broomsticks instead of from his wings.

"Very good, Mr. Potter!" Madam Hooch called, flying alongside with her own broom. "Now let's see a landing!"

Turning again, Harry did his best to turn the speed of the broomsticks down again. It was a bit difficult to concentrate on that at the same time as shedding altitude and flaring his wings – but he managed it, touching down with a _thump_ and turning both broomsticks off at once.

"Nice one, Harry!" Dean called.

"Thanks!" Harry called back with a wave – but that somehow managed to start just _one_ broomstick going, not both of them, and he stumbled as the force pulled him to the side. His wings flared out automatically and he flapped hard, trying to stabilize himself like he had back at primary school during cycling proficiency, and it all got a bit complicated.

When the world stopped spinning, both broomsticks had detached – Madam Hooch quickly dispelling the effect of the sticking charms when Harry actually left the ground not under control – and Harry had ended up upside down against a grass bank.

It felt like he'd left a dent.

"All right, Mr. Potter?" Madam Hooch asked, as Harry pulled himself out of the impression he'd left in the soft ground. "Still some work to do, I think."

Harry could only nod agreement, but he was still smiling.

* * *

Forty-five minutes and three crashes later, Harry was feeling a bit less sanguine about the whole thing. Draco hadn't stopped laughing since about halfway through the class (except when Madam Hooch glared at him) and while hitting the ground at fifty miles an hour didn't actually _injure_ Harry it was still starting to give him a bit of a headache.

At the end of the lesson, though, Madam Hooch pointed something out which interested everyone and which made Harry forget his worries about what would happen if he landed on one of the two nearly-identical brooms – the first Quidditch match of the year was on that weekend, Gryffindor against Slytherin.

"I think we've got a chance if the game goes long enough," Ron speculated, on the way up to Gryffindor tower. "Fred and George say the Chaser team's great, and of course the better that is the more you want a long game… I remember Charlie said that Oliver Wood's good too, he's the Keeper, and of course my brothers cause havoc on the pitch which is what you want from a Beater."

"And the Seeker?" Neville asked, keen to show he was keeping track.

"…not sure," Ron admitted. "I don't think they wanted to talk about it."

* * *

Saturday rolled around, and so did the Quidditch game.

The pitch was big enough that the stands had plenty of room for people to sit as they pleased, forming small groups among the large numbers of seats, and Harry's friends took advantage of that to set up in a group.

"It does look kind of empty," Dean said. "If this was a Hammers game the stands would be a lot more full."

"I did read about that, actually," Hermione said. "Because the stadium's made with magic, they can just make as many seats as they want. So they can just put dozens of blocks of twenty-five or fifty seats everywhere."

Harry had been fiddling with the seats a bit, and finally decided it would be most comfortable to lie across two of them. "So this is probably never full?"

"Right," Hermione agreed, looking slowly around at the other stand blocks. "It looks like just about everyone in the school is here."

"Of course they're here!" Ron snorted. "This is the first Quidditch match of the year!"

"I'm not _quite_ sure everyone's here," Hermione replied. "The box the teachers are in… it looks like a couple of them are missing. Isn't there meant to be a Divination teacher?"

"Would she need to come?" Harry asked. "She'd just look in her crystal ball and know who was going to win."

"That sounds awesome," Ron said. "Divination's kind of weird, but it sounds useful-"

Whatever else Ron was about to say was drowned out as Lee Jordan was permitted access to a microphone. The Third-year was very enthusiastic, and – it sounded to Harry – a little bit biased, a he was enthusiastic about Gryffindor and complimented the whole team as they flew out onto the pitch.

Slytherin's team got less in the way of compliments – which was to say, just about none at all – and Madam Hooch walked out to the middle of the pitch before releasing the three flying balls.

"They have to give it at least ten seconds for the Snitch to vanish," Hermione said, into the hush as both teams mounted their brooms, and then the whistle blew.

* * *

Quidditch looked a bit like a cross between a rugby game and a dogfight, with both sides sometimes passing back and forth or lining up for pursuit but also having to deal with the frankly dangerous Bludgers. Ten minutes into the game, the score was thirty-twenty to Slytherin – and it would have been a lot higher were it not for some excellent saves by Oliver Wood – and Harry nudged Ron.

"Why haven't Cormac or Terence got the Snitch yet?" he asked.

"What?" Ron blinked. "They haven't seen it, yet, of course! Where is it?"

"Over there," Harry pointed at the little glittering streak of gold.

Ron squinted. "I… can't actually see anything there. You sure it's-"

"It's right there," Harry went on. "Under the level of the stands on the other side."

"That's way too far away to see anything," Ron said, blinking in surprise. "How good are those glasses of yours? Can I try?"

Harry passed them over, and Ron put them on.

"I can't see anything now!" he complained.

"They're Harry's glasses, Ron," Hermione said, as Ron took them off again. "They're meant to correct what's wrong with his eyes."

Harry spotted the Golden Snitch again, watching it fluttering to one side before pausing and diving down instead; there was still no sign either of the Seekers had seen it.

He wasn't really sure why – it was made of gold, after all. Some things were harder to spot than others, but gold was really easy.

"...Harry?" Neville asked, carefully. "Do you actually _need_ glasses?"

"Well, not really," Harry replied, taking them back from Ron. "But I'm used to them now."

He put them on again, then noticed that Hermione was staring at him.

"You know that normally wearing glasses that aren't for you means you _can't_ see properly, right?" she asked. "I don't even know how your eyes can adjust for strong lenses like those."

Harry shrugged.

* * *

"Okay, close your eyes," Dean said. "One, two, three, four-"

"Slytherin scores!" Lee Jordan announced. "Eighty-thirty to Slytherin!"

Ron groaned.

"And – look!" Dean told Harry.

Harry scanned the pitch quickly, and pointed. "There."

"Okay, this is just _nuts_," Dean decided. "Is this some kind of dragon magical power or something?"

"Well, Harry _does_ like gold," Hermione frowned. "Maybe that's it?"

There was a _crack_ overhead as (possibly) Fred hit a Bludger at one of the Slytherin Beaters. The Beater in question deflected it with his own club, sending it at his fellow Beater, and then that player launched the Bludger at the Gryffindor Seeker – who saw it just in time to avoid a full hit, but took a glancing blow which spun him around on his Cleansweep broom.

"Ouch," Neville said, rubbing his shoulder in empathy. "Quidditch looks painful."

"That's part of the fun, though," Ron said, then groaned again as the Slytherin Keeper managed to block a goal shot. "Come on, Lions!"

The Quaffle dropped down and got snagged by Marcus Flint, who bent low over his broom and charged upfield. He rolled out of the way of a Bludger sent his way by (probably) George, then Alicia snatched it from his grip. She threw it up to Katie, who found herself at the epicentre of two incoming Bludgers and two Slytherin chasers, and dove out of the way in time to avoid being the middle of a four-way collision.

Terence flashed past, making Katie brake reflexively, and Marcus took the Quaffle back off her. He got ready to throw it, and Harry sighed – seeing where Terence had actually been going.

"What?" Neville asked, then the whistle blew.

"Slytherin snitch catch!" Madam Hooch called, as the Slytherin Seeker held up his glittering prize. "Game over!"

"That's a two hundred point lead," Hermione said. "Ouch."

Ron looked crestfallen, then shrugged. "Better than some Cannons games."

"Really?" Dean asked. "How?"

"We scored!" Ron replied. "That's better than the first half of last season."

Dean gave him a long look.

"Mate, I'm a Hammers supporter," he said. "And I'm telling you – your team needs to improve."

"It could be our year!" Ron insisted. "All it'll take is for all the other teams to catch Spattergroit."

"That's, what, a hundred witches and wizards?" Hermione replied. "I think at that point it counts as an epidemic."

"Yeah, but the Cannons would have a much better chance at the Cup," Ron said. "Worth it."

* * *

"P-p-p-perhaps you have h-heard of w-wards," Professor Quirrel said, chalking the word WARDS on the board and heralding the beginning of _another_ theory lesson. "T-the term has t-two m-meanings, in n-normal use and in t-t-technical use. W-what do you t-think it m-m-means… M-mr F-Finnegan."

"Defensive spells," Seamus told him.

"S-such as?"

Harry wrote down the Professor's words in his notes, doing his best to avoid noting down the stutter. Fortunately for the next several minutes Professor Quirrel just kept asking for examples of what wards did, writing them down on the board – prevent Apparition and Portkeys, keep out ghosts and dangerous spells, stop someone walking over the property line.

People mentioned spells to keep out anyone below a certain age, to curse a thief or just to keep Muggles away.

Professor Quirrell eventually stepped back and looked at the board, half-covered with spells, and then back to the class.

"A f-fine list," he pronounced. "And all w-wrong."

"What?" Seamus asked, sounding highly offended.

"W-ward is a term used by M-M-Muggle writers and f-foolish w-wizards," the Professor went on. "T-there is no s-such category, and I w-will not hear a-anyone m-mentioning it in m-my class in t-this way."

He turned to the board. "C-charm. Hex. J-jinx. C-charm. Curse, C-curse… im-p-possible…."

Harry watched in surprise as the chalk for every last one changed colour, one at a time. Some of them vanished entirely, but the rest took on colours indicating whether they were a Charm, Jinx, Hex, Curse or in one case a Transfiguration.

"The only W-wards are o-obscure r-rune magic used by G-Goblins," Professor Quirrell went on. "And t-that is b-because they can c-call them that if they w-want. B-but none of you w-will ever cast a p-proper W-ward."

As he spoke, Harry noticed something – a faint smell he could sort of detect over the garlic – and raised his hand.

"Professor?" he asked, when Quirrell called on him. "Are you all right? I noticed you're favouring your right side a bit, and I can sort of smell blood."

Professor Quirrell went a funny pink colour. "T-the w-weather was v-very sunny t-this morning," he said. "W-which is s-suprising after how c-cold it w-was last n-night."

"Oh, sorry, Professor," Harry winced. "I suppose you must have slipped."

"A-any _im-p-portant questions?"_ Professor Quirrell asked, as Harry shrank back a bit.

Hermione asked why it was that the word ward had become used in Muggle language, and Quirrell replied with a shrug – saying it wasn't up to him to explain – before moving on to explain the basics of defensive spells more generally. It didn't seem like there was much logic in what the defensive spells actually got labelled, except that anything that didn't interfere with anybody inside it was _maybe_ a Charm?

Harry wasn't sure what was so wrong with using the word ward anyway as a catch-all way of describing protective spells.

But not on exam papers, of course… unless they were about Goblins, at least.

This was one of the better lessons, though. Last week Lavender had asked a fairly innocent question and that had drawn Professor Quirrell off on a thirty-minute complaint about how few wizards understood how dangerous Muggle cars were.

* * *

On Friday afternoon, after they finished telling Hagrid about the week, Hermione twirled her wand.

"I was thinking about how you have to go out in the cold, Hagrid," she explained. "I had an idea about it."

"Oh?" Hagrid asked. "Well, um… y' don't really need to do anything for me on that front, Hermione. I've got me coat, and I don't care much about the cold anyway."

"Actually, I'm kind of interested now," Dean admitted. "What's your idea, Hermione?"

Hermione replied by pulling a glass jar out of her robes, unscrewing the top and pointing her wand inside.

"_Hyacinthum Flammare,"_ she announced, and a jet of bluish flames shot out of her wand and splashed into the container – half-filling it in moments.

"Whoa, that's cool," Neville said, watching as the fire continued to burn. "So it's fire that doesn't need fuel?"

"It doesn't need fuel, or air," Hermione told him. "And it's actually safe to carry."

She demonstrated, sticking her hand into it and scooping some out before letting it drip back into the jar. "But it'll be sort of… like a hot water bottle, I suppose. It keeps you warm enough, it just doesn't burn anything."

"Now I want to learn that spell," Ron said. "It's right cold now."

He glanced at Harry. "Well, Harry doesn't feel it. But I bet you do – Nev, doesn't it sound great?"

"Well, if it doesn't burn things… I'm just not sure I could get that spell right," Neville admitted. "I have so much trouble with the spells in class..."

"You're keeping up with the theory work," Hermione said, considering. "I think you _could_ do it, it's not actually a very hard spell."

"If everyone else is learning it, I'd like to as well," Harry decided.

"Why do you need a spell to conjure fire?" Ron asked. "You're a _dragon_. You can conjure fire by breathing out."

"It'd be nice to be able to use fire that didn't burn things," Harry explained. "There are some times when I think a flame would look nice but I don't want to set something on fire, because fire gets out of control. But this fire doesn't set things on fire, or… I think the word fire has stopped meaning anything now."

He sat back, tilting his head. "I wonder what would happen if I ate some?"

"Probably best not to experiment, mate," Ron said, sniggering. "I don't want to imagine you with hiccups, it'd look like you were a firework."

"Oh, that's something I hadn't realized!" Hermione gasped. "Dean, we missed Fireworks Night!"

"Fireworks what?" Hagrid asked, putting down the jar he'd been warming his hands on. "Is that a Muggle thing?"

Dean nodded. "It's where Muggles celebrate how, um… it's something about Guy Fawkes trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and to celebrate how he didn't we have a big bonfire and put a Guy on it and then send fireworks up."

He glanced at Hermione, suddenly worried. "Guy Fawkes wasn't a wizard or anything, was he? Is that why they don't have it?"

"I don't think so," Hermione replied. "I think if he was a wizard he probably would have _actually_ blown up the Houses of Parliament."

She shook her head. "Anyway – yes, Harry, I'd be glad to teach you along with everyone else. I actually wonder if you could cast it so you could _breathe_ bluebell flames instead of your normal fire breath."

"That would be nice," Harry said, then frowned in sudden thought. "Maybe I can do that with other spells? There's one which makes water, right?"

"A dragon that breathes water?" Hagrid chuckled.

"Let's start with _Hyacinthum Flammare_ for now," Hermione said.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Professors Flitwick, Kettleburn and Sprout all turned up at Hagrid's hut at once.

"Is everything all right?" the diminutive Charms professor asked, as Harry waved at him.

"This?" Hagrid asked, looking around at all the bright blue flames covering his hut. "Nah, this is fine. They're just practicin' a spell."

"Oh! I see, bluebell flames!" Professor Flitwick realized. "Yes, a very beautiful Grade One spell, not one I actually teach directly – but you seem to have an awful lot of it around, Rubeus!"

"That was mostly my fault," Dean said. "I managed to get it started, but I couldn't get it to stop."

"Is there a reason why you haven't dispelled it?" the Herbology teacher asked.

"It's not actually hurting anything, is it?" Harry shrugged. "I know I'm not very good at telling that, but Hermione said it wasn't dangerous."

"It's how it looks," Professor Sprout explained. "When we saw that part of the grounds seemed to be on fire, we were a bit worried!"

"If you'll allow me?" Professor Kettleburn added, producing his own wand – which was held in a quite amazingly scarred hand.

Nobody objected, so he waved it and cancelled out just about all the flames. The only bits left were where Ron and Neville were still trying to master the spell – Ron's flames were a vivid orange and uncomfortably hot, like overheated hot cocoa, while Neville hadn't produced more than a little curl of faint blue which seemed too cold to be going on with.

"Ah, let me see those again?" Professor Flitwick asked.

"Filius, do you mind if I head back to the greenhouse?" Professor Sprout requested, as Professor Flitwick gave every indication of being ready to give a little impromptu Charms extra-credit session. "I've got some honeydew to feed."

"Not at all," Professor Flitwick told her. "Now, let me see your wand movements, Mr. Weasley..."

* * *

That Sunday, Harry re-read the important bits of their latest book club assignment – this time a book about the life of a particular sphinx by the name of Phix in Ancient Greece.

It was a little hard to tell whether it was fiction or non-fiction, though it was certainly interesting. Phix had reportedly flown all over the place and had met plenty of the people Harry half remembered from a unit on Ancient Greece back in primary school, from Theseus to Heracles to Perseus (though it seemed like a lot of these people were actually wizards, which was a bit of a surprise to Harry until he thought about it).

"We should probably get going," Hermione said, and Harry checked the clock. It was about fifteen minutes before the book club was going to start, and it was all the way down in the dungeons, so that sounded like a good plan.

"Neville?" he asked.

"I'm – oh, hold on," Neville said, and pulled his Remembrall out of his pocket.

"Good," Hermione told him.

The glass ball glowed red, then went white-red-red-white-red.

"Oops," Neville added, and shoved it back into his pocket before running up the steps to his dorm.

"What do you think he forgot?" Dean asked.

"Probably the book," Harry guessed, and not long afterwards Neville came back down with the book held in both hands. He stumbled as he reached the bottom of the stairs, almost tripping, and Katie caught him.

"Whoops!" she said. "There you go, Neville."

"Thanks," Neville replied, ears going a bit pink, and they climbed out of the portrait hole before making their way down the stairs. Hermione led the way, as she was a lot more sure about the layout of the stairs than Neville (while Harry had to admit that he had a bit of a habit of jumping over the side of the grand staircase rather than actually trying to navigate his way through the castle's passages if he was in any sort of hurry).

* * *

They reached the classroom not long before the hour, and when they entered it most of the others were already there. The two other Gryffindors who'd decided to join the club weren't present, possibly busy or just having had a better idea of how to get down in time, and Harry squeezed himself into a space between two empty chairs which Hermione and Neville took a moment later.

"Did you finish it?" Hermione asked.

Neville nodded, and Harry confirmed that he'd been re-reading it instead of doing a last-minute sprint to the finish.

"What did you think of how Oedipus reacted?" she asked. "I thought that was awful!"

"He didn't sound very happy about it," Harry agreed, and then the two Gryffindor fourth-years arrived in a rush.

"Sorry," one said, speaking for her housemate. "Peeves."

"He is a bit annoying, isn't he?" said Robert, the Hufflepuff Sixth-year who was running the club. "I think we're all here? Anyone who isn't here, put your hand up?"

Nobody did, though there were a few chuckles.

"All right," Robert went on. "Let's see… Neville, let's go with you first. What did you think of it?"

"It's a bit violent," Neville admitted. "There's a lot of times when there's battles and stuff, and she gets really angry when people get questions wrong."

He squirmed a bit. "And… the other thing is how much she seems like a normal person apart from that. I liked it when she helped out a boat that was sinking."

"That is a good start," Robert agreed. "Phix is a Sphinx, and they're Beasts rather than Beings, but they're fully intelligent and you can have a good conversation with them. It's important to remember that, though I think some of us find that really easy."

Harry thought that was probably about him.

"What about you, Elora?" the Sixth-year added, indicating one of the girls this time, and Harry settled down for a good discussion.

* * *

It was perhaps forty minutes later, and an argument about how big a city Thebes actually _was_ (and how many people would be going in or out of it by road) was in full swing when there was a sort of muffled _thump_.

"Did anyone else hear that?" Elora asked.

"What's that?" Robert said, then there was another _thump_ and a kind of scraping sound.

"That's outside," Harry reported.

"Maybe it's someone moving a cauldron?" a Ravenclaw third-year suggested, and then there was a _crash_ and the door jolted on its hinges.

Harry squirmed out of his comfortable resting place and stepped forwards, head tilted a little, and Robert slowly drew his wand.

Then the door broke into splinters as a massive club smashed into it, and what could only be a _troll_ shouldered through the door with a grunt of effort.

"Everyone stay back," Robert warned, his wand tip lighting up slightly. "_Protego_!"

A shimmering magical shield formed around the Sixth-year, and the troll stared at it for a moment before swiping its club. There was a bright flash as the club hit the shield, breaking it, and Robert went sprawling – most of the force of the blow taken by his shield, but still knocking him across the floor.

Harry ran forwards as the troll raised its club, and flared his wings before spitting a jet of flame at it. That resulted in a howl of pain from the troll as Harry's breath burned its skin, and instead of smashing at Robert it backhanded Harry across the room.

The next few seconds were a bit of a blur to Harry, but the first thing he heard after the bookcase had stopped collapsing on him was Hermione shouting the incantation for her bluebell flames spell.

"_Stupefy!"_ someone else called, and Harry flexed his wings to knock the books and shelves aside. There were at least a dozen wands pointed at the troll, firing hexes and jinxes which splashed off its tough skin, and it was flailing about more-or-less at random with the club because there were blue flames all over its eyes so it couldn't see properly. There was a _crash-crash-crash_ as the troll smashed the wall, the floor and a desk, reducing the latter to splinters, and Robert was back on his feet with a shielding spell up again and firing some kind of blasting curse.

With the hand not holding the club the troll scraped away the flames, and Harry dove right back in.

"Keep casting!" he told them, shooting another jet of dragon fire at the troll to distract it away from the other students. "You might find something that works!"

"But we'll hit you!" Elora said.

"He's a dragon!" Hermione said, sensibly. _"Flipendo!"_

Hermione's spell hit the troll, though it didn't seem to do anything, and the monster slammed the club down to try and splatter Harry. He rolled to the side, knocking over a table, then picked it up with a forepaw and held it up like a shield.

How did you fight a troll, exactly?

Harry had the feeling that the answer most dragons would give to that would be "fly into the air and set it on fire", or possibly just "eat it" if they were big enough. But there wasn't really enough room for either – though Hermione used her bluebell-flames spell again and got it in the troll's eyes, so it couldn't see, which was sort of like using fire. And then Robert managed to hit the troll's club with a jet of red light that knocked it flying into the air.

Then Harry got knocked into the air, as the troll groped around for something to hit before finding the table he was using as a shield and flinging it at the ceiling. It smashed, and Harry flapped his wings before landing painfully – on the Troll's back.

It moaned, trying to grab at him and make him let go, and Harry dug his talons in and held on tight. His wings beat automatically to stabilize him, and spells went everywhere – some of them splashing off his wings, others his back as the troll spun around, and many more of them hitting the troll.

His view of the room was a bit dizzy, since the troll kept trying to get hold of his neck and use it as a handle, but Harry was sure that Neville was missing. That was worrying, but so was the fact he was trying to keep a ten foot troll from attacking anyone – then one of the Slytherins in the club levitated a desk before Banishing it at the troll's head, and Harry jumped off for long enough that the desk hit with a _crash_ before he landed.

"Good!" Robert said. "Everyone who can, try a Stunning spell!"

Harry closed his eyes, and heard the shout of _"Stupefy!"_ followed by the flickers and flashes of several stunning spells hitting him, the troll and the room nearby.

Then a very different voice shouted _"Deflagrato!"_ and an explosion knocked Harry spinning through the air. He quickly opened his eyes, flared his wings as best he could, and managed to sort-of-crash into a table.

He watched as an upside-down Professor Snape lowered his wand, looking at the unconscious troll. There was a large scorch mark on its side, and it had been sent head-first into the wall by most of the force of the blast.

"What in Merlin's name happened here?" he demanded. "Stevens?"

"A troll came in during Book Club," Robert answered, panting.

"I knew that much!" Professor Snape said sharply. "Longbottom could say little else. Why does this class look like a bomb has hit it?"

Still a bit dazed, Harry rolled over onto his front and looked around. Most of the desks had been wrecked and the survivors turned over to try and trip the troll over, there were hex and jinx marks on the wall near the door, and it even looked like it was on fire from all the bluebell flames the troll had flung around. And that was before noticing the collapsed bookcase Harry had hit, or the three or four places where the troll's club had smashed into the stone walls and floor.

And, looking around the door, was Neville.

"Harry kept the troll distracted," Hermione began.

"Granger, I was speaking to Stevens," Professor Snape told her without looking. "Unless your name has changed in the last forty-eight hours please keep quiet."

"She's pretty much right, Professor." Robert said. "When it came in I cast a shielding spell, but the troll knocked me aside. Then Harry got involved, and he kept going in even though he was being hit really badly – he let the rest of us curse at it without being distracted. But I don't know how we would have stopped it if you hadn't shown up, Sir."

Professor Snape frowned, seeming to be thinking hard about something, then waved his wand. "Well? All of you get out of the way so I can fix this, don't be fools."

* * *

Hermione insisted on taking Harry to the Hospital Wing, where Madam Pomfrey looked him over, cast a spell Harry didn't know and then asked why on earth Harry had been brought in for a few mild bruises.

When she heard what Harry had actually been _involved_ in, however, she said he'd have to stay overnight. Harry wasn't at all sure that made any sense, but Madam Pomfrey _was_ the school nurse and so she was the one who was the medical professional.

At least his friends brought him his books, and Harry took the opportunity to read through _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of The Rings_ again, focused specifically on the bits about trolls. He was sure it hadn't taken quite that much work to defeat the trolls in those books, and wanted to know what to do in future.

'Wait for the sunrise' wasn't very helpful, admittedly.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Well, if everyone's watching Quidditch...

Also: Troll in the book club!


	11. Dragons With Santa Claws

The next day, the wizarding police came around.

They interviewed Harry, Neville and Hermione (separately), asking plenty of questions about what happened. Harry was pleasantly surprised to find that they only mentioned the fact he was a dragon when it was actually relevant, such as why he'd asked everyone else to keep using spells, and why he'd put himself in so much danger.

That last question had come from a pleasant Auror called Sturgis Podmore, who was quite surprised to discover that just how _un_wounded Harry had been by the whole ordeal. His total injuries amounted to bruises, which it had taken Madam Pomfrey seconds to magically heal.

* * *

Harry later found out that they'd interviewed everyone involved, including Professor Snape, and that Professor Quirrell had been brought in to try and explain just how a troll had made it into the dungeons of Hogwarts. The Defence teacher had rather weakly suggested that perhaps it had become lost, or that it had stumbled upon a secret passage (though Fred and George had thought about it for a while and had said that they couldn't think of a secret passage in the school that could let a troll in like that).

It was the talk of the castle for the next few days, and just about everyone involved (except possibly the troll) was considered to be 'cool', 'awesome' or 'brave', or in Snape's case 'surprisingly helpful'. Harry clinging onto the back of a rampaging troll got particular attention, and even Neville was treated with a kind of awe by the Gryffindors because he'd actually dared to seek help from _Snape_ – successfully.

Almost inevitably quite a few of the next lessons ended up being about trolls as well. Professor Flitwick gave Hermione three points for her creative use of a simple charm, which made her blush, and Professor Quirrell spent the whole of the defence lesson questioning Harry on what he could resist apart from certain spells and being hit with a club.

Inevitably, though – apart from the occasional article Harry saw in the news about whether Hogwarts was safe – the furore slowly died down, and the normal rhythm of the week resumed. Harry did Astronomy and practiced flying on Wednesday, spent most of an hour trying to Transfigure a curtain into a bookcase on Thursday, and made another potion on Friday. Then over the weekend he visited Portree on Skye, instead of Fort William, and ran quite unexpectedly into about half of the Pride of Portree Quidditch team in a gift shop when the young daughter of the team's Keeper pointed him out in the middle of the shop.

It had taken a lot of fast talking (and some quite bare-faced lying) to convince the shop owner that all that was involved was an over-excitable child – and after some thought the Keeper, Meaghan, got him a T-shirt with a dragon on the front of it and told him to wear it whenever he came to Skye (which was apparently surprisingly well populated with wizarding families). The dragon on it was quite nice looking, blue rather than black, but it looked like a friendly dragon to Harry and he was very much in favour of friendly dragons.

The experience did make him wonder where else in the country there were wizarding communities, though.

* * *

As November wore on, however, something occurred to Harry – or, rather, several somethings occurred to Harry.

The first thing was that it wasn't all that long until Christmas, when Ron mentioned that he and his brothers were going to be staying at Hogwarts over the Christmas break. That sounded like a good idea to Harry, but it also got him thinking about the second thing.

The second thing was that he was now – well, he wasn't sure if he was _rich_, exactly, because he didn't know what qualified as rich by wizard standards and the only real standard he had for what was rich by dragon standards was "a mountain _full_ of gold". But he had quite a lot of money, more than he needed for a bed, and he'd mostly spent it on himself so far. And that meant that he was in the unusual position of being able to get his friends Christmas presents.

(He was in the unusual-for-Harry position of having friends, too, but that wasn't quite as new.)

For most of the people he sort-of knew, like Blaise and Penelope and Terry, he didn't really know enough about them to know what they'd like (except that most people liked chocolate) and he also didn't know if he knew them well _enough_ that it was all right to get them a present. The Dursleys had never really let Harry experience Christmas, or at least the present side of Christmas (even Uncle Vernon had realized that having half a dozen of Dudley's friends over while Harry was literally locked in a cupboard was asking for trouble, and Harry and Aunt Petunia had ended up with a sort of understanding that Harry helped with cooking and in return got to join the Christmas table – and even watch television – so long as he kept his head down).

That left Harry wondering who his closest friends were, and after a bit of careful thought he decided that in addition to Hermione, Dean, Neville and Ron, he should probably get something for Hagrid as well. Hermione was easy, and Harry knew straight away what to get Ron – in fact it gave him a rough idea of how much to spend on the others – but the others gave him a bit more of a problem. In fact they gave him a lot more of a problem, and it wasn't until early December that Harry's mental list of Christmas Problems was down to just Hagrid after a particularly productive trip to Fort William.

The only unusual aspect of that particular shopping trip had been that he'd discovered that the Forbidden Forest had a Hippogriff herd. Things hadn't quite escalated to a fight, though it had taken him several minutes to remember that you were supposed to keep eye contact and by then they were all very suspicious indeed.

* * *

Then, one Friday night, it snowed.

A lot.

* * *

Harry wasn't _quite_ a newcomer to snow, but the most he'd ever actually seen was an inch or so that had blanketed Little Whingeing the previous winter. Uncle Vernon had moaned, Aunt Petunia had complained about the mess it would make of her garden when it started melting, and Dudley had thrown as much of it as possible at Harry.

But the snowfall at Hogwarts was something else entirely. On Friday there had been ominous grey clouds in the sky; on Saturday morning the snow was four feet deep.

Harry _loved_ it.

The first thing he did after spotting how much snow there was was to dive out the window, dropping to a low altitude over where he thought one of the flat lawns was before deliberately crashing down into the soft, pillowy drifts. After that, a bit of experimentation told him that he was small enough to burrow into the snow and hide inside it, which gave him all sorts of ideas.

Since so few students had class on Saturday, practically the whole school came out to get involved in snowball fights or to make things out of snow. Professor Flitwick happily distributed Warming Charms to everyone who wanted them, Professor McGonagall went around making sure that the snowball fights weren't getting entirely out of hand and Professor Quirrell got bombarded by snowballs from Fred and Maybe Fred. (Their homing-in snowballs got six points for excellent charms work from Professor Flitwick and a deduction of eight points plus detention from Professor McGonagall.)

Harry's friends came out too, pushing their way through the thick snow towards where they'd last seen him, and Harry's ears pricked up as he listened to their approach.

Moving stealthily through the thick drifts, Harry dug underneath the top layer and waited.

"Harry?" Ron called. "Where is he?"

"Probably somewhere near the crash mark?" Dean suggested.

"Yeah, but it's all white now," Ron replied. "Except for, you know, the hundreds of fellow decent students having snowball fights… and the Slytherins."

Neville giggled. "That's kind of rude, Ron."

"What?" Ron replied, shrugging. "If Slytherins talk about us and they say there's hundreds of sensible students plus Gryffindors, I don't mind."

He paused. "Much. Okay, maybe it depends who says it?"

"I wish I'd learned a spell to let me find something," Hermione frowned.

"Would it even work on Harry?" Ron asked. "Most spells don't."

"It does depend on the spell," Hermione replied. "Healing spells seem okay, those dragon-related spells that Charlie used mostly worked as well… I don't think anyone's ever researched it."

She inspected her wand, wondering if there was some way she could use it to help. "I could use bluebell flames to melt a way through..."

"That would get rid of some of the snow, though," Dean said. "And that'd be a real shame."

Harry slowly spread one wing out, using all his strength to unfold it through the snow, then brought it up in a sharp movement. His flight muscles catapulted several cubic feet of snow into the air, and his friends yelped in surprise as he buried them.

"Snowball fight?" he suggested.

Dean shook the snow off. "You git. We were worried about you."

"Why?" Harry asked, honestly puzzled.

"We thought dragons were maybe weak to being cold," Neville supplied. "Like plants."

"Plants are also weak to being set on fire," Harry replied. "I'm not."

"I like the sound of a snowball fight," Ron volunteered. "Anyone else?"

Hermione scraped the bluebell flames back into her jar, having used some of her supply to melt the snow that had gone down the back of her neck. "I don't think it's fair if Harry's on one team."

"Well, what about if I'm on one team and all four of you are on the other team?" Harry suggested.

"That's what I mean," Hermione explained.

"It's not that bad, is it?" Neville asked, turning to look at Hermione.

Harry ducked his head back down, and Hermione pointed.

"...oh, okay," Neville realized, noticing that he couldn't see Harry at all.

"Maybe we could get Blaise, Daphne and Tracey involved?" Dean suggested. "That might make it a bit fairer."

* * *

Harry was a bit surprised to discover that the reason Dean wanted the three Slytherins involved was so that there could be a team with Harry _and some of the others_ on it, so that at least the humans could be hit with snowballs. But it was good fun and lasted at least an hour, with people like Lisa Turpin and both the Patils joining in on a chaotic snowball brawl.

Then Fred and George noticed, and five minutes after that won the whole thing comprehensively with two dozen of their "snow-bludgers". Four of them even homed in on Harry under the snow, and when he tried to fly out of the way they followed him before splatting across his scales – except for the one he hit with a blast of his dragonbreath, which just turned to water and splashed instead.

Fortunately, Harry could add 'water' to the list of things that people thought might work on dragons but didn't actually work on him.

* * *

Harry found it a bit hard to focus on his homework for the last week of term, as there always seemed to be a new way to play around with the snow outside. From hollowing out a hide under a particularly deep drift with his fire-breath (which he was able to experiment with, and which told him that he didn't seem to have a limit on how long he could breathe fire for as long as he kept taking breaths), to skating along the frozen lake with his wings flapping for propulsion, to covering his tail in snow like an Ankylosaur club and flicking it as a giant snowball.

Everybody else was anticipating the end of term and the beginning of the Christmas holidays as well, and Harry had already sent Hedwig out on the first of three long journeys she would be making in December. As a snowy owl she had no trouble at all getting through the blizzards (she'd seemed offended at Harry for suggesting she might), and she hadn't even needed a _name_ to know exactly where to go – headed squarely for 'Neville's House'.

* * *

The final few days of school that year went past, with their last lesson before Christmas being a Potions class in which they made an anti-drowning potion. It was difficult and fiddly, with small mistakes changing how long the potion would work for, and Professor Snape examined the results before telling everyone how well they'd done.

Apparently, for some of them, it might actually be worth drinking them before falling over the side of a ship.

Mentally converting this through what he considered his Professor Snape Translator, Harry decided that meant "quite good" and went to lunch – which was in a now-glittering Great Hall, with twelve enormous fir trees all around the walls festooned with candles, glittering bubbles, glowing red-and-green snow and even some glass baubles full of sparks. Holly and mistletoe decorated every surface, and Harry could swear he spotted Penelope and Percy talking under some of the decorations before his attention was drawn to the food.

Even though it wasn't an official feast, the house-elves down in the kitchens had gone to a special effort. Pigs in blankets and stuffing competed for space on the table with cuts of turkey and chicken, there were jugs of gravy and sauce (mint, apple, bread, cranberry and pumpkin), and when Harry sat down a plate of glazed ham with a little sign on it appeared just for him.

"Hey, Harry, can I have some of that?" Ron asked, seeing Harry inspecting it before giving it a taste.

"I don't know..." Harry replied. "What do you think of steel shavings?"

They were pretty nice and crunchy, as far as Harry was concerned, but Ron turned pale before saying that he'd rather just have what was available on the other plates instead.

"I bet this is going to be a pretty amazing Christmas," Dean said, looking around. "It's been months since I've seen my family, so I'm glad to be back with them, but if this is what it looks like here then what's it going to be like on Wednesday?"

"Oh, yeah, that's right," Harry realized. "You're leaving tomorrow morning, right?"

Dean nodded. "I know Neville's going too, and I think Seamus is. Most of the girls too."

"Gryffindor Tower's going to be pretty empty," Ron mused. "Maybe that means we'll get the good armchairs by the fire."

"You mean _you_ will," Dean chuckled. "Harry could probably sleep in the fire."

"I did that once," Harry told him. "It just meant I had to wash before breakfast."

"We should probably just agree to not be surprised by you," Ron said, shaking his head. "What's next, sleeping out in the snow? Underwater?"

Harry started seriously thinking about it.

"I _think_ I still need to breathe," he said eventually. "But there's this whole bit in _All the Weyrs_ where the dragons go into space. They can hold their breath for a really long time."

Ron and Dean exchanged a look.

"So, Christmas!" Dean said loudly. "What are you looking forward to?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "I'm not sure if anyone's got me anything. I decided to send my Aunt and Uncle some fudge from Fort William, though, and I did get something for each of you."

"Of course you're getting something, Harry!" Ron told him. "Because – well, never mind that."

Harry looked interested, wondering what it would be like to get presents, then went back to his meal.

Halfway through his knife broke, and he shrugged before eating the broken-off piece as well.

* * *

After four days in the much lonelier castle – most of which Harry spent in the library, or in Ravenclaw Library, when he wasn't outside with Ron trying to make elaborate snow structures – Christmas Day came around.

There was a pile of presents at the foot of Harry's bed that morning, and Harry was surprised by just how nice it felt to get presents. Ron tore straight into his own, but the first thing Harry did was to carefully open a present which was wrapped in obvious Muggle paper.

The card on top announced that it was from Hermione, and inside was a brand-new book – _Witches Abroad_, a Pratchett book Harry hadn't realized was out yet. His tail flicked form side to side happily as he put it carefully aside, intending to read it later, and then Ron made a sound of surprise.

"Harry?" he asked. "What's this?"

Harry looked over, seeing that Ron had found his present – a small piece of folded paper on which he'd written the words 'I.O.U. One Wand'.

"I asked Professor McGonagall about it," Harry explained. "I know your wand's kind of old, and it's been used a lot, so I got permission for us to go and visit Diagon Alley today or tomorrow to get you a new one."

Ron blushed bright red so he nearly matched his hair. "Harry, this is too much – but – I don't-"

"Ron, you're my friend," Harry interrupted. "And I know your family aren't very well off. But I've never had the chance to get anyone Christmas presents before, and this is the thing I thought would help you out the most."

Ron seemed lost for words for a long moment, and while he was Harry opened the next present on the pile. This one actually turned out to be from Ron's mother, who'd somehow managed to knit a green sweater with wing holes – and which a bit of squirming revealed actually did fit Harry.

"Wonder how she managed that," Ron said eventually, as Harry tested out the wing holes. "...oh, yeah, right, she probably got to see all of Charlie's notes."

"It's really nice," Harry told him.

Part of him thought it was a bit of a pity that he couldn't be there when their other friends opened their presents, because Ron's reaction had been nice to watch as well. Neville would be opening a spider plant, Dean was the recipient of a big box of art supplies, and Hermione (in a move which Professor Dumbledore would have disapproved of but Hermione was almost certain to like) had got the abridged but still long version of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

Harry thought of it sort of like _The Silmarillion_ but about real events. And with fewer dragons, so clearly inferior, but Hermione had already mentioned giving the Silmarillion a go so getting her that as a present probably wouldn't be polite.

Neville had got him sweets, which was nice (especially the big collection of Chocolate Frogs, which Harry was sure he'd have fun with) and it turned out that Dean had been doing a painting of Harry for the last week and had finished it just before heading home. It showed him in the library, wand out to light the book he was reading, and perched atop a hoard of all sorts of things from envelopes to books to a Golden Snitch.

Underneath that was when Harry found the present from his Aunt and Uncle, and his snort of laughter made Ron look over in surprise.

"It's my aunt and uncle," Harry explained. "I got fifty p."

Showing Ron the coin, he converted the price in his head. "So that's about… a tenth of a galleon, which is a bit less than two sickles? I'm kind of wondering how they got it here at all though."

Under that was a wooden flute from Hagrid, which he seemed to have made himself and which sounded a bit like an owl, and as he was reaching for the last package there was a crash as The Two Georges came in.

"Blimey," one George said. "I didn't think Mum would go for it."

"I didn't think Mum _could_ go for it," the other George agreed. "Are you two done opening your presents yet? We've already got Percy."

"Almost," Harry said, holding up the last package. "And Ron and I need to go and see Professor McGonagall before lunch – we won't be long."

"What's that about, Ronniekins?" George asked, and Ron mumbled something.

Then all four Weasleys stared as a fluid grey cloak slithered out of the package to the floor.

"Is that an invisibility cloak?" Other George said, as Harry picked up the note that had come with it in one hand and the cloak in the other.

"It says it used to belong to my dad," Harry supplied. "Whoever sent it doesn't know if I can use it properly, but he says I should give it a try."

When he pulled it on, draping the main part of the cloak over his body and pulling his tail in, only his head was visible – and, though it was a bit uncomfortable, he managed to get his head under the hood as well.

"That's not possible, though, is it?" Percy asked. "It's got to be at least a decade old even if your father got it new. Invisibility cloaks don't last that long without fading, and this one is absolutely transparent."

He frowned, clearly thinking about it, and Harry shrugged the cloak off again. "Maybe it's magic?"

"...that shouldn't be an explanation," Ron grumbled. "But somehow, I know it's the best one we're going to get."

Harry put the cloak away, thinking about how it was the only thing he owned which he knew had belonged to his dad, then followed his friends downstairs to the common room.

* * *

"Good," Professor McGonagall said, when Harry and Ron turned up at her door at a quarter to eleven. "I see you have managed to avoid being caught up in Christmas Day celebrations for the whole morning."

"It was pretty close," Harry told her. "But I said Ron didn't have his present yet, and the twins told us to get going."

"It would be nice if they were normally so reasonable," the Professor said, with a thin smile. "We will be travelling to Diagon Alley by Floo. Have you used the Floo before, Mr. Potter?"

Harry shook his head. "It's happened in some of the books I read, but they never bother to explain it."

Professor McGonagall explained it.

Apparently you threw some magical powder into a fire, and it made the fire turn green, and then you said where you wanted to go and jumped into the fire. But the fires had to both be connected to the Floo network, so Harry sort of wondered why you needed the connection_ and_ the powder.

Shrugging it off, he watched as Ron used it with confidence – throwing a handful of the powder, saying "Diagon Alley!" and walking into the green flames.

Harry did the same, though a bit of the powder trickled out between his talons. Then he went whizzing off through the Floo network, which turned out to involve spinning around and around while snatches of other fireplaces went past and flames like a warm breeze surrounded him.

Then he came out the other side, landing facefirst on the stone in the Leaky Cauldron, and someone yelped in surprise.

"You all right, Harry?" Ron asked. "Sorry, I forgot to mention, landing is kind of difficult..."

"I'm okay," Harry replied, checking his glasses weren't broken, and Professor McGonagall came through a moment later.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

Harry shook his head. "I'm fine, Professor."

"I wasn't talking to you, Mr. Potter," the Transfiguration professor said, and everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was suddenly very interested in their drinks.

* * *

After thinking it over for a bit as they went to Ollivanders' and got Ron his wand, Harry decided that Floo was sort of like if you had to use a waterslide to get somewhere, except that there was fire instead of water and you didn't land in a swimming pool.

He wasn't _certain_ about that, because he'd never actually been on a waterslide, but it seemed like a good comparison.

Mr. Ollivander had taken one look at Ron's old wand and described it as "a fine wand but far too tired, might be serviceable if it was a good match but not a good match at all" and begun measuring, and because it was a new experience for Ron that meant Harry could sit down on his haunches and enjoy it. It didn't take nearly as long as it had for Harry, which was fortunate, and after about six minutes and twenty wands the elderly wandmaker found a match.

It was longer than Ron's old wand, and willow instead of ash, but it had the same type of core. Harry felt almost certain that that meant… something… and Ron was almost in tears when he tried a spell he'd had trouble with for weeks and it worked just fine the very first time.

Then Professor McGonagall smiled, and told him that she'd be expecting great things from him in class now, and Harry did his best not to chuckle as Ron took on a distinctly hunted look.

* * *

The journey back confirmed Harry's belief that so far there was no form of quick magical transportation he thought was nearly as good as just flying everywhere. Apparition might be an exception, and he was looking forward to finding out, but that wasn't going to be for about five years.

(Maybe if he could connect his own flame to the Floo? That might not be possible but it would at least let him send other people somewhere.)

Then it was time for the Christmas dinner. There weren't nearly as many people as there had been at the previous feasts, but the meal was even more amazing – and there were crackers everywhere.

"Ever pulled a cracker before, Harry?" Fred asked, holding one out to his twin (who was wearing the jumper with the F on it, so Harry assumed he was George).

"I've seen my aunt and uncle pull them," he said. "There's a bit of a pop, and a paper hat."

"What, really?" Ron asked. "That's all?"

"Try this!" George said, pulling, and the cracker went off with a _boom _that knocked both twins flat. Half-a-dozen canaries flew out, orbiting briefly over the heads of the two cracker-pullers before flying up towards the ceiling, and a high-topped shako fell to the floor between them.

Harry tried one next, with Ron, and got a giant Chinese straw hat and a tiny grey statue of a griffin. A slip of parchment fell out as well, and Ron read it before giving the griffin a careful tap with his new wand.

Colour washed over the griffin, outlining it in red and gold, and it took off to hover just over his head. Then Ron pulled another cracker with Percy, engulfing them both in blue smoke, and won a fez which he put on and which the griffin landed on top of.

Fred and George had managed to get hold of two matching sombreros, one of them swapped for the shako, and Harry did his best to make sure the hat in question would stay put on his head before getting started on the food.

There were occasional pauses during the meal in which more crackers got pulled, the blasts echoing through the hall in clumps, and Harry managed to get hold of a thing that looked a lot like a gyroscope, several coloured marbles which orbited in the air like planets, a packet of luminous balloons and something called a 'dungbomb' which he wasn't sure he liked the sound of very much.

He was also patiently talked out of seeing what a wizarding cracker tasted like by Percy, despite the best efforts of the Twins.

* * *

The rest of the day involved another snowball fight (with the slight difference that, this time, the Twins' snow-bludgers were countered by Percy calmly Banishing so much snow at them that it knocked them both flat on the ground) and then long hours just relaxing together in the common room. Harry read _Witches Abroad _lying on his back by the fire, Ron routed all his brothers one by one at Wizarding Chess, Ron's griffin-statue chirped at Scabbers and the odd gyroscope-thing kept buzzing and whistling intermittently.

As he finally went to sleep that night, Harry could really see why people liked Christmas so much.

* * *

The next day, Harry explored the castle.

Mr. Filch, the caretaker, seemed to be quite suspicious about Harry going up and down stairs and looking in doors, but Harry had asked Percy the rules about it and the Prefect had told him that all the doors he wasn't supposed to go into were either password-locked or just plain locked. And Harry hadn't really had the time to do a really good explore of the castle yet, so he decided that was going to be how he spent the whole of Boxing Day.

His first conclusion was that there really was a quite amazing number of classrooms in Hogwarts, most of them not being used. One of them had something that rattled in a wardrobe, which he decided not to open, and another was full of piles and piles of old school papers stacked to the ceiling and forming corridors through most of the room. It seemed like there was always a surprise to be found, though usually the surprise was "really surprisingly thick dust".

* * *

By the middle of the afternoon, as the Scottish sun was setting and a couple of hours before dinner, Harry had done all the towers and most of the upper floors. He'd met a very surprised woman who told him he was a bad omen (which just seemed rude to Harry), along with plenty of portraits, and Lord Ridley had only ineffectually stabbed him twice before the Grey Lady had silently pulled him away.

He'd also found a secret passage, though unfortunately it was collapsed so it didn't really go anywhere.

As he opened the door to one particular classroom, however – another of the ones which smelled like they hadn't been used in years – he noticed that this one had a mirror in it, as well as the usual desks and chairs.

A big ceiling-high mirror with a gold frame wasn't exactly normal, even by what Harry had seen of Hogwarts, so he stepped forwards to have a look. Ron had told him about mirrors where you looked in them and they told you what you could do to look better, but this was so much bigger… maybe it did something else?

If it was a mirror where you could step through it and end up somewhere else, that would be nice. Maybe it would be a better way of getting around quickly than the Floo… but then Harry would need to know how to use it, and there was something written above the mirror but 'Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi' wasn't any language Harry knew.

Maybe it was Gobbledegook.

Or maybe it was a mirror like the one that Lily Weatherwax used in _Witches_ _Abroad_? Harry looked behind him, just in case there was a second one to form a tunnel of mirrors, but there was just the one.

Then he actually looked into the mirror itself, and had to stare.

Instead of a reflection of Harry looking the same as he actually did, like a Muggle mirror would give – or even a reflection of Harry waving – what he saw was himself curled up on top of a pile of books and gold and other things.

Then another dragon appeared, one with bright emerald-green scales, and shook the reflection-Harry awake. There was no sound, so Harry couldn't hear what he or the other dragon said, but the reflection-Harry's tail flicked eagerly from side to side.

A man came into the reflection as well, one with black hair and obvious Wizard's robes, then changed in a blur into a big black dragon about the same size as the green one. They both hugged reflection-Harry, and the male dragon told him something as well, then all three of them jumped into the air and vanished as the mirror went black.

Harry swallowed, a lump in his throat, and looked again at the inscription. It looked a lot like the kind of puzzle he'd read about, but he couldn't quite work it out.

When Harry looked at the glass, this time, he and the other two dragons were flying high over an unfamiliar landscape. The mirror-Harry was playing around the other two, sliding back and forth through their wakes, and after a long minute of watching Harry noticed that far down below looked an awful lot like Minas Tirith from The Lord Of The Rings.

Another jump, another long ten seconds of the blackness_ between_, and he appeared next to the two older dragons again. This time they were flying over a volcanic crater, with hundreds of other dragons visible lounging on ledges in the sun, and Harry was _sure_ it had to be Benden Weyr.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, rubbing at them with his paw, and decided it was probably a bad idea to watch alone.

Maybe if he got Ron to have a look? Or Neville, Dean and Hermione, when they got back? It was worth a try… and he thought it looked like a pretty good show, too. Almost like a film, though without any sound.

* * *

Ron was busy in a Chess match with a second-year Ravenclaw called Cho, so Harry decided not to interrupt him, and then it was dinner – then, after that, Ron mentioned how Harry had chased after Chocolate Frogs on the train. The other Weasleys (and most of Gryffindor) were interested in watching, so they pushed the armchairs to the side to make a clear space and spent the next hour or so cheering Harry on.

When Harry actually told Ron what he'd found, it was too late to actually go and see it without being out after Curfew. Ron was interested in trying anyway, wanting to try out the Invisibility Cloak, but Harry pointed out quite sensibly that they could just go _tomorrow_.

* * *

When Ron came to see it, it turned out that he saw something totally different in the mirror even if Harry was the one standing in front of it and Ron was off to the side. Instead of seeing Harry and the other two dragons (or a witch and a wizard), Ron saw himself – older, smiling, wearing a bulky Muggle spacesuit and being clapped heartily on the shoulder by his oldest brother Bill.

Confused, Harry looked back at the mirror – which this time showed the black dragon giving him the silvery-grey invisibility cloak – then up at the inscription. He'd been thinking about it overnight, but still couldn't-

-then, all at once, it hit him.

'ishow no tyo urfac ebu tyo urhe arts desirE'

_I show not your face but your hearts desire._

He quickly passed that on to Ron, who blushed hard.

"That sounds, um… kind of creepy, actually," Harry's friend added. "It's like… how does it know? Is it getting into our minds?"

"I don't know," Harry replied. "For me, when the dragons are humans I don't recognize them… I _think_ they're my mum and dad, which _is_ something I'd really like, but how would I know? I haven't been human in years, and if that is mum she doesn't look much like Aunt Petunia."

"Maybe if you could see a photo of them you'd know?" Ron suggested. "But yeah, I think this thing is kind of dangerous. Dad says you have to be careful of anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."

"Really?" Harry asked, distracted. "What about the Sorting Hat? Or the Fat Lady, or any of the portraits?"

Ron blinked. "I guess the Sorting Hat keeps its brain in the hat?"

"But that means it doesn't make any sense," Harry replied. "Then you could just say that the mirror keeps its brain in the mirror."

Ron raised a finger, about to reply, then lowered it again. "Ummm..."

"And You-Know-Who was really evil, and you could see where he kept his brain," Harry went on. "And what about that little griffin statue of yours?"

"Okay, maybe it's a bit of a silly rule," Ron admitted. "I think you're just meant to think twice, and here that's what we're doing."

"You're right," Harry agreed. "I'm glad I've seen it, but I won't come down here and stare at it or anything…"

* * *

AN:

* * *

And that's Christmas.

Dean's picture actually exists. It's drawn by Amalgamzaku (who can be found on Deviantart under that name) and is the cover art picture of the fic.


	12. More Of An Obstacle Course

Hermione, Neville and Dean arrived back by train with the rest of the students on the third of January, a few days before the spring term began. The castle was just as deep in snow as before, and Hedwig was quite smug about how easy the snowstorms were for her relative to the other owls.

Most of that evening was taken up talking about presents – Neville's spider plant went on his bedside table, while Hermione had already reached the sixth century. Harry proudly demonstrated his Weasley Jumper, Ron recharged the griffin he'd got in the cracker and had it do a few tricks, and Dean somewhat reluctantly showed that his mum had got him a dustpan and brush.

"She said it was because first years weren't allowed broomsticks," he said.

"Is this what Muggles use instead?" Neville asked. "Do you put your feet on this bit and… or not?"

"No, it's a joke about cleaning," Dean explained. "I got some books as well, this series called Redwall."

"I've read one of those," Harry told him. "It was pretty good. Scabbers might not like them, though, rats are the bad guys."

He frowned, sitting back a bit. "But I know orcs are the bad guys in The Lord Of The Rings, maybe some real orcs aren't?"

"What's an orc?" Ron asked. "I don't think there's such a thing as an orc."

Harry shrugged, a big expansive gesture with his wings. "We don't have a textbook called _Fantastic Beings._"

"That's because it's a lot harder to describe Beings," Hermione said, looking up from Belisarius' North Africa campaign. "A lot of Beasts are the same as one another, but Beings are really varied and not really a good subject for a first-year textbook. I think they turn up in History of Magic and in Muggle Studies."

"Why would they be in Muggle Studies?" Neville asked.

"Because Muggles know about a lot of them," Hermione answered. "Or they have myths at least. Like… giants, they know about giants, and goblins as well. And in Japan there's several stories about kitsune. But I don't think Muggles know about veela."

The conversation went on from there, and Hermione put a bookmark in her book to properly join in the discussion. They talked about whether Harry counted as a Being or a Beast, and whether Wolfsbane would mean that a Werewolf counted as a Being while transformed if it had taken the potion, and how it wasn't really fair that a lot of Beings weren't allowed wands.

An odd mention in one of the books they got out to check on their facts also left Harry wishing he could head over to Ravenclaw Library, but it was after curfew so he'd have to wait – and that reminded him of the other thing he wanted to tell his friends about, the Erised mirror.

It _mostly_ wasn't that he wanted to go and see it again. It was more that… well, after Ron had looked into it, he'd been a bit thoughtful about what he'd seen.

Even if just staring into the mirror was a bad idea, and even if _his_ desire wasn't something he could ever actually have… Ron's desire (which they'd talked about and decided was to go somewhere no wizard had ever been) was something he could actually manage, if he put in a lot of work on it.

Would the same thing happen with his other friends? It might, and that was what Harry thought was worth knowing.

Besides, it _was_ really neat.

* * *

The next day was a Saturday, and Harry led his friends (all four of them, with Ron coming along for what he called 'moral support') through the castle to the disused classroom.

"Are you sure this is allowed?" Neville asked.

"Percy said that anywhere we're not supposed to be is either password locked or just plain locked," Harry replied. "And… here."

He pushed the door open, then frowned.

Ron pushed past, and saw what Harry had already noticed – the mirror was missing.

"That's kind of a shame," Hermione said. "I was actually interested in trying to work out how this magical mirror works."

Harry frowned, and sniffed the air a bit.

"I think someone moved it," he supplied. "Maybe yesterday? We could see if we can find it."

"But if someone's moved it, could it be _because_ we're not supposed to look at it?" Dean asked. "Only makes sense to me, if there was something kids weren't supposed to look at."

"That's easy," Harry replied. "Like I said, anywhere we're not allowed to go is going to be locked, so if we run into a locked door then we're not allowed through. Simple."

Hermione nodded, agreeing that that made sense, and they followed Harry back out of the classroom as he did his best to track down the way the Erised mirror had gone.

* * *

They went along a corridor, then down a flight of steps, and after that through a secret passage that started behind a tapestry, sloped down, and came out again through a sliding wall.

"I told my mum about how many secret passages there are here," Dean said. "She didn't believe me."

"It's kind of common in old magical buildings," Neville told them. "My bedroom's on the third floor, but there's a way to get to it where you go to the first floor landing and then down a flight of steps."

A couple of fifth-years went past, telling one another something like 'it's still there' and giggling, and after another corner they came to a door.

Harry sniffed a bit, and nodded. "It definitely went in there," he judged, and pulled the door open.

The first thing he saw was three giant canine heads, bobbing up and down as they looked at him. One of them growled, the third one roared, and then the one in the middle shook itself and bumped both of the other heads.

"Oh, goodness me!" the middle head said, as Harry saw that all three heads were attached to the same giant dog. "You must be that young dragon that Rubeus talks about."

"So it is!" the left head realized. "Delighted to meet you, dear boy."

The three-headed dog offered a paw to shake, and Harry did so.

"What's going on in there?" Hermione asked, and Harry used a wing to push the door open.

"Oh, are these your friends?" the middle head asked. "Come in, come in, it's lovely to meet you all. You must be that Hermione Granger girl, Rubeus is very impressed with you – oh, and that's Ronald Weasley, isn't it?"

All four of Harry's friends came in, and Dean shut the door behind them as the big dog continued talking.

"So, tell me, how has your term gone?" the left head asked. "I'm afraid we haven't had a chance for a magical education ourselves."

"...you're a three headed dog," Ron said, staring.

"Well spotted," the right head grumbled.

"Oh, calm down," the middle head told him. "But he does have a point. I'd have thought that friends of a dragon would be quite happy with talking to a three-headed dog."

"It's not that we don't like the idea of talking to you," Hermione tried to explain. "It's just… we didn't know three-headed dogs existed. Or do you prefer Cerberus?"

"Either is fine, my dear girl," the left head assured her. "Either is fine. And I'm afraid we're rather rare – you won't find us in any textbook! Rubeus was delighted to meet me, I have to say."

"Why aren't you in the textbook?" Neville asked, beating Hermione to the same question.

"Why, I'm a Being, of course!" the dog explained. "Sadly I only get one vote between the three of us, but we usually agree on what to do with it."

"That's what we were just talking about yesterday," Dean realized, slapping his forehead. "Now I feel like an idiot..."

"Oh, but where are my manners," the left head said. "You can call me Fluffy."

"...really?" Ron asked, still sounding like the whole situation had rendered him completely discombobulated. "Fluffy?"

"That _is_ my name," the middle head agreed, somewhat miffed. "Is something wrong with it?"

"It's a bit of a surprise," Harry told him. "_I'm _surprised you don't have three names."

"Well, Rubeus is the one who gave it to me, and I do quite like it," the left head said. "Really, though, that is a good point. Perhaps I should think of Fluffy as my surname…"

* * *

After half an hour or so of conversation about magical education and what Muggles thought of three-headed dogs, Harry asked about the trapdoor.

"Oh, well, do you know I'm actually supposed to be guarding it!" Fluffy's left head answered. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, we're looking for a mirror," Harry told him. "It's somewhere around here, the scent goes through that trapdoor."

"Well, now," the middle head mused. "A mirror? I remember something like that..."

"Not supposed to go down there," the right head grumbled.

"Full sentences, _please_," chided the middle head. "Those erudition lessons were for all of us."

"Is it locked?" Harry asked. "We got told that the only doors we weren't allowed past were either locked or password-locked."

"I see, I see," the left head rumbled, sniffing, as the whole of Fluffy stepped back to expose the door. "Well, I don't _believe_ it's locked, now that I come to think of it…"

Harry pulled, lifting the ring of the trapdoor, and it opened with a light squeak from the hinges.

"There's no stairs," Ron pointed out.

Harry shifted his wings, half-opening them. "I'll go down and have a look. Maybe there's an enchanted trampoline or something, and if there's not I'll be fine."

"Or you could just use a light," Hermione pointed out. _"Lumos."_

Her wandlight revealed a mass of plants, and they exchanged glances.

"I'll go down and check," Harry decided, and slipped down into the hole. Deliberately not using his wings to brake his fall all the way, he dropped down hard and landed on the springy plant matter.

"It's fine!" he called up, then felt the plant still moving after the bounce from his landing should have stopped. A tendril curled up towards his neck, and he bit it off – it tasted sort of like celery. "But – um – hold on, this stuff's moving!"

Neville gasped. "Wait, that's Devil's – look out, Harry! It likes cold and damp conditions!"

"_Hyacinthum flammare!"_ Dean called, sticking his wand through the trapdoor.

* * *

When Dean's massive dose of bluebell flames was over, the plant (which Neville clarified was called Devil's _Snare_) was trying to hide in the corners of the room. Harry himself was half-covered with bluish fire, but it helped him see so that was all right.

The next room contained flying keys, which was very strange indeed, but it also contained brooms, and Harry brought two of them back for the others to join him down at the bottom of the trapdoor in relays – with Fluffy asking them to please be careful, as he wasn't sure what kind of dangers there were down there if there was a Devil's Snare infestation in that room.

"Doesn't this door qualify as locked?" Hermione asked, trying the handle to the next one along.

"The key's up there, though, isn't it?" Harry shrugged, scraping off the sticky magical fire now he didn't need it. "There's loads of them, it's got to be one of the keys… any ideas?"

Ron looked at the lock, describing it, and Harry looked back and forth – then pointed. "There!"

* * *

With that sorted out (albeit with a bit of trouble getting the target key surrounded) they next found a massive chess board.

Dean pointed at the chess board. "Are you _sure_ we're meant to be down here?"

"Why would a giant chess set mean we weren't supposed to be down here?" Ron shrugged. "It's like a puzzle. Haven't you seen that door to the kitchens where you have to tickle the right bit of fruit in a painting?"

He frowned. "Okay, so if this is Wizarding Chess, then… can we begin?"

The white pieces on the other side of the room stood there impassively.

"Oh, okay then, we don't need to," Harry decided. "Unless I need to be the one playing on the other side?"

Dean shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

Harry walked forwards, but when he got past the middle the pawns all drew their swords. The stone blades raised in unison, pointing at Harry, and Ron snapped his fingers.

"A-ha! So you _can_ move!"

The white king and queen shifted slightly. They had no faces, but it seemed like they were looking at Ron.

"Don't you know the rules?" he asked. "White goes first!"

The white queen put her hands on her hips, then gestured at Harry, and the dragon loped sideways to get off the board. Once that was done, one of the white pawns moved two spaces, and Ron pointed. "King's knight to H3..."

* * *

Harry knew that Ron really liked chess, but by the time they were half an hour into the game – with Ron trying to get a bishop into position to checkmate the white king – he was sort of wishing he'd brought a book.

"Wonder what we'll be doing on Monday," Neville was saying. "I'm not sure I'll be very good, I haven't had a chance to practice over the holidays."

"Why not?" Hermione asked. "It seems very short-sighted if they don't allow you to practice. My family had relatives over the whole time, but if they didn't I'd have shown my parents magic just so they could see what I can do as well as to keep in practice."

Neville frowned. "But... I thought we weren't allowed to do magic over the holidays, especially not in Muggle areas."

"Well, I tried out some simple spells after I got my wand, before coming to Hogwarts," Hermione replied. "Everything worked for me, but maybe you just have to be careful not to get noticed?"

"There's no way Gran won't notice," Neville gloomed.

Harry frowned. "I think I remember reading in one of the Wizard novels I got about something called the Trace. They can detect under-age magic, I think? Maybe they didn't stop you before you came to Hogwarts because they thought it was still accidental."

"Well… that hardly seems fair," Hermione huffed.

"I bet they have some kind of special exemption for the rich kids," Dean suggested. "So maybe-"

"Checkmate!" Ron called, interrupting them. "Good game, thanks for playing!"

The white king somehow managed to look contemptuous as he threw his crown to Ron's feet.

"That was fun," Ron added. "Is that Erised mirror thing through that door on the far side?"

Harry checked quickly, locating the scent, then nodded.

"Okay," Ron went on, and opened the door.

He shut the door.

"Guys," he whispered. "There's a really big troll in there."

"Another troll got into the castle?" Neville asked. "Right here where a student could run into it?"

"I think Hogwarts has a troll problem," Dean muttered. "What do we do?"

Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her robes. "_Right_!"

"Uh oh," Ron winced. "I know that look. That's how she looked when Professor Flitwick assigned us a spell she already knew how to do."

"I've spent a lot of the last two months reading about how to stop trolls," Hermione told them. "I have about six different plans for it, but two of them need Harry's help. Harry?"

"Of course I'll help," Harry agreed. "We want to make sure the troll can't hurt anyone."

* * *

Five minutes later, Harry was flexing his wing as they walked down the corridor.

"Is that all right?" Hermione asked.

"I said I was sorry," Ron mumbled, and Harry tapped his friend with the other wing.

"Don't be sorry," he told Ron. "That was brilliant."

"Yeah, I never would have thought of dropping the troll's club on its head," Dean nodded. "It's a pity the troll fell on Harry, though."

Harry shrugged. "It just stings a bit, that's all. But I was really impressed with that massive light spell, too… it's a pity these trolls don't turn to stone like the ones in The Hobbit. Maybe it's an Olog-Hai."

"A what?" Ron asked.

"It's like a troll that can walk around in daytime, made by the Dark Lord," Neville said, then went pink. "I mean, um, a different Dark Lord to that one."

"You've been reading the Lord of the Rings?" Hermione asked Neville.

Dean snorted. "I was there when Harry told him about the Ents. He was sold on it."

The conversation was interrupted by a sudden _whump_ of flames lighting up, sealing off the way they'd come and the way ahead. One of the curtains of flame was an odd, sooty black, while the other was purple, and all five Gryffindors looked around in surprise.

"What _now_?" Ron asked.

"Oh, look!" Hermione said, sounding eager. "This is a logic puzzle!"

"First a troll and now a maths problem," Dean sniggered. "This is Hermione's lucky day."

"Logic and maths are different, though," Hermione muttered, mostly focused on the instructions and on the potions bottles on the wall. "Okay, so, um… wait, there's apparently poison in some of these?"

"That doesn't sound very safe," Harry mused. "Well, unless it doesn't really mean poison."

"Mate, to you _nothing_ is poison," Ron shrugged.

"Okay, so… give me a minute," Hermione asked.

* * *

As Harry was examining the fire, wondering if anybody had something they could throw into it to see what happened, Hermione pointed. "Okay, so neither the biggest or the smallest bottles are poison, but the bottles second from the ends are both the same. So that means those two are the wine."

She moved them forwards a bit, then moved the two to their left back a bit. "And those two are poison… so there's one poison left and both the actual potions. One of the poisons is on the far left side, which means that the one opposite it – that one – is the potion to move back, because they're different and neither of them lets you move forwards."

Satisfied with her answer, she picked up the smallest bottle. "And this one is the potion to move onwards. There's not much of it, though."

Harry considered, then picked up the largest bottle and pulled the cork out with a squeaky _pop!_

"Harry, what are you doing?" Hermione asked.

"I'm testing if this is the wine," he answered. "It's the biggest one, so it's safe, right?"

"This should be interesting," Dean muttered, as Harry took a sip.

"I think that's wine, yeah," he agreed. "It tastes like wine smells."

On seeing Dean looking puzzled, he shrugged. "I don't know if I can get drunk, and I'm going to need to fly out of here – I'll find out some other time."

"So how do we all get over the flames?" Neville asked. "There's only one bottle and that's not going to be big enough for all of us."

"Or for us to get back," Hermione agreed.

They thought about it, then Dean pointed. "I know. Harry, you can have half of the bottle, and then you can lie down on top of the flames – that way you can block them and we can go over the top."

"I don't think this is the intended solution," Hermione frowned, passing the small potion bottle to Harry.

Harry was wondering if maybe the intended solution was a Bezoar, but he didn't have one with him. So he drank some of the bottle, which tasted sort of like ice, and lay down on the black flames.

The others crossed over, which was a bit awkward, then Harry followed behind them.

"Well, here it is," he said proudly. "Told you we could find it!"

Hermione took a look first, and blinked. "That's… that would be quite nice..."

"What is it?" Ron asked.

"I'm writing a textbook," Hermione told him. "No, my _name _is on the textbook… I think I'm teaching here. And… the class seems to have a three-headed dog in it, and at least two dragons."

"That sounds pretty cool," Dean chuckled. "Can I see?"

"That's not how the mirror works," Ron supplied, as Dean looked in it. "We tried."

Dean frowned. "I… okay, I didn't know that about myself."

At Harry's quizzical look, he flushed slightly. "It doesn't matter."

When Neville looked, on the other hand, he gasped.

"Is that a sword?"

"We can't see, Nev," Ron reminded him. "What's the sword doing?"

"I'm holding it in one hand and my wand in the other, and I'm fighting some evil wizards," Neville explained. "And – I think I'm keeping my Gran safe?"

They considered that.

"I think that's the most actiony thing any of us have had," Ron summarized. "Ever thought about using a sword?"

"No," Neville replied. "But now I am… I wonder if I could have one like that sword Aragorn uses."

* * *

After Harry had had most of the rest of the bottle, and they'd gone through the black flames again, and then all five of them had had some of the other potion and gone through the purple flames, past the troll, past the chess board (ignoring the rude gestures from the white chess pieces) and cleaned up the bluebell flames in the plant room, each of Harry's friends flew up with one of the brooms from the key room and then Harry took them and put them back before flying up and out of the hole himself.

"How did it go?" Fluffy's middle head asked. "Did you get on all right?"

"We got to see the mirror, so yeah," Harry agreed. "There's a lot of weird stuff down there though. You know there's actually a troll?"

"Oh, dear..." the left head sighed. "I did hear about your troubles with that troll that got into the castle last year, Hagrid was very distressed."

Fluffy carefully lowered the trap door back into place. "There we go. And do pop by again some time. It seems like half the students have at some point, though normally I simply roar at them and off they go."

"We'll have to visit some time," Harry agreed, pleased to have met another not-a-human who was such good conversation. "Can you read? I might ask Percy to enlarge a book for you."

"Hmm… we'd better not," said the left head, thinking about it. "It might undermine the menace slightly. But thank you so much for the offer."

Harry waved, pleased with how the afternoon had gone.

Then the door opened, and Professor Dumbledore came in.

When he saw the five young Gryffindors, he blinked. Then he asked Harry to move back a little to make room, and came in before shutting the door behind him.

"Good day to you all," he said politely, drawing up a chair – using his wand to make it out of thin air. "I must admit to being quite surprised to see you all – Miss Granger, Misters Weasley, Potter, Thomas, Longbottom."

"Good afternoon, Headmaster," Fluffy added.

"Is something wrong, Professor?" Harry asked, suddenly worried.

"Perhaps, perhaps, Mr. Potter," Professor Dumbledore said calmly. "Mr. Fluffy. Has anyone gone down the trapdoor?"

"Just these five," the right head said. "Said they were able to go through any doors that weren't locked."

"Well… we did sort of go through a locked door," Harry admitted. "But the key was right there, so it seemed more like a puzzle than anything."

"Dear me," Professor Dumbledore said, adjusting his glasses, and looked at the door. "I would have thought that my warning that the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side was out of bounds was adequate warning. And it was locked, I must add."

"It wasn't," Ron protested. "The door opened really-"

"We're on the third floor?" Hermione interrupted, going pale. "I didn't realize!"

Dumbledore chuckled. "I must admit that it is a little easy to get lost in good old Hogwarts… Mr. Fluffy, is Mr. Weasley correct that the door was not locked?"

"I fear he is," Fluffy's left head said. "People have been opening the door to look at me and then running away all last term. A few have done it so far today, as well."

"Dear me, it seems that the door really should be better locked," Professor Dumbledore mused. "Perhaps it is the problem with teaching a lock-opening spell here. Well, you mentioned the door with the flying keys… I assume then that you turned back at the chess set?"

"No, Ron got through that," Dean supplied.

"...oh, no, hold on," Neville groaned, sounding very much like he'd worked something out that he'd rather not. "This is all to try and _stop_ people getting in, isn't it? The Devil's Snare is to catch anyone who gets past Fluffy, and the keys… I bet the troll was a guard, as well..."

"They're not very good at it, though," Harry said. "And why would you want to keep the Mirror away from people?"

"The Mirror of Erised is dangerous indeed, Mr. Potter," Professor Dumbledore said. "Many have spent all their time staring into it, wasting away and tantalized by visions of a world they cannot have."

"Mine didn't really look _impossible,_" Dean said. "It'd just be a bit embarrassing to ask."

"Mr. Thomas?" Professor Dumbledore asked. "I believe you went back to your home for Christmas? Does that mean that you made your way all the way to the end, if you have seen the Mirror?"

"Well… yeah," Dean agreed. "Most of them weren't even that hard. Ron dropped the troll's own club on top of its head."

"We did use up all the flame freezing potions," Harry added. "Is that okay, Professor?"

Professor Dumbledore chuckled. "Perhaps… but what would you suggest, Mr. Thomas?"

* * *

"...make sure that only someone who's actually _meant_ to be there can get past it," Dean went on. "That's the whole point, you put the dangerous stuff _afterwards_."

"My goodness," Professor Dumbledore said with a smile. "I fear I will be up for hours tonight making those changes; I may even need to be out of bounds after curfew, and I hope that Mr. Filch won't complain to the headmaster about it. What would you say is the most important?"

"Easy," Dean said. "Password on the door that only teachers get. Then for the potions room, just fill them all with… with… what was that special really powerful sleeping potion?"

"Draught of Living Death," Hermione supplied.

"Right, that," Dean agreed. "Nobody said the instructions had to lead you to the _right_ bottle… you could just keep the right potions in your office or something, and if someone tries drinking it they'll just get frozen until you can go and look. Then there's all the other stuff, like making the Devil's Snare fireproof or something – oh! And there's one more thing I just thought of."

"What might that be, Mr. Thomas?" the Headmaster asked.

"Put the _mirror_ in your office," Dean replied. "If someone tries to steal the mirror, and they can get all the way to the end, they'll be stuck there."

Professor Dumbledore stared for a moment, then laughed.

"An excellent idea!" he pronounced. "My, Mr. Thomas, you do have a quick wit indeed…"

"I think it's because of Monty Python," Dean said, which made Hermione stifle a giggle. Harry wasn't at all sure what she meant, and she told him she'd explain a bit later.

"So just to make sure I understand?" Fluffy asked with his middle head, raising a paw. "I'm to growl and try to scare off anyone who comes in, same as before?"

"Excepting myself and Hagrid only, yes," Professor Dumbledore replied. "And Minty, of course."

"Well, of course Minty!" Fluffy's left head agreed. "She's such a good cook!"

* * *

It was later than they expected when they made it back to the Gryffindor Common Room, and after a bit of discussion the five of them dispersed to get used to living back in Hogwarts again (or, for Ron and Harry himself, to get ready for the beginning of term).

The book club book had been longer than normal over the winter, and Harry decided he should give it a bit of a skim-read through his favourite bits. As he picked up the book from his trunk, though, something fell out of his robe pocket.

Harry examined the odd, red-coloured rock, shrugged, and stuffed it in the bottom of his trunk with the stuff he'd mentally labelled as 'snacks'.

* * *

AN:

* * *

In fairness to them all, this is a castle where you genuinely have doors that lead elsewhere on a Friday.

And yes, cerberi are not in Fantastic Beasts. So the natural conclusion is... Fluffy has the vote.


	13. Dragons Do More Lessons

The spring term began, and it was right back into the regular routine of a magical education at Hogwarts. Snow still covered the ground, and the only thing which made the outdoors lessons like Astronomy endurable was the Warming Charms that most of the staff members distributed on request.

(Or, at least, that was what Harry was told. Even being buried in the snow for an hour or more only felt vaguely uncomfortable to him, so he just trusted that his friends knew what they were talking about when they said what humans were able to cope with.)

In Charms they were dealing with the theory of casting a spell that affected only part of an object instead of all of it, and Professor Flitwick demonstrated by using a levitation spell on just one page of a book (which turned it over) and comparing it with levitating the whole book (which was certainly useful for other things but which didn't actually turn the page).

Harry put his paw up, and asked what would happen if you levitated only the cover of the book or only the pages, and the Charms Professor thanked him for a good question before demonstrating. Either option caused the pages of the book to snap shut, though lifting the pages meant that the book rose spine-down with the covers hanging open and levitating the cover made it slowly turn so it was spine-up, and Professor Flitwick took the chance to explain that when a charm affected only _part_ of an object you had to think carefully about how that could affect the rest of it.

It was a really interesting topic, and Harry was coming up with ideas for altered Charms effects for the rest of the day and quite a lot of the next. His friends were as well, and one of the ones Dean came up with was the one they all thought was the best – enchanting the feather end of a quill with a charm to clean away ink, so you could use it like a pencil eraser.

"...actually, why don't they do that?" Ron asked. "It's a real pain to cross stuff out or rewrite a whole essay if I make a mistake and don't catch it in time."

"Maybe it's to teach you to take care the first time?" Hermione suggested.

Ron protested, and Hermione laughed. "No, don't worry, I agree. I think I might need to research one like that for us – but you'll have to cast it yourself if you want it, Ron!"

The promise of actually having access to a charm like that seemed to mollify Ron, and Harry had to admit he'd like something like that as well.

* * *

"Today's subject is the constellation of Andromeda," Professor Sinistra told her first-year students. "Locate the W shape of Cassiopeia, like we were looking at last week."

Harry looked up at the sky, glad that there never seemed to be any clouds when he was at the top of the Astronomy tower.

He frowned, suddenly, wondering why that was, then shrugged it off and located the W-shape.

"You all have it?" the Professor asked, and got a number of muttered agreements. "Good. Now, the stars Almach, Alphertaz and Mirach are the three brightest stars in Andromeda, and they are below the W shape. They form a rough line… now, direct your telescope towards the one on the left."

That took several minutes of looking at the sky, then through the telescope, adjusting it to be looking in roughly the right direction and then correcting it with quick glances between the sky and the eyepiece. Harry felt like it was a bit harder for him than it was for most of the rest of the class, because he wasn't quite shaped right and his muzzle kept bumping into the telescope's main body, but at least it wasn't as bad as for the few other first-years who had glasses – he could take his off, after all.

"Who has their telescope in place?" Professor Sinistra asked, and plenty of hands went up. "Good. And who still needs help?"

Neville's hand was one of the few which went up, this time, and the Astronomy Professor aligned his telescope properly before helping Vincent and one of the Hufflepuffs.

"Now, who can tell me what is unusual about this star?" Professor Sinistra went on. "Let's see… Mr. Weasley, you're a new hand."

"It's at least a double star, Professor," Ron answered. "You can tell because it's got more than one colour… I _think_ I can see three?"

"Very good, Mr. Weasley!" Professor Sinistra smiled. "Almach, or Gamma Andromedae, is actually a _quadruple_ star, but to see three of them is very good. A point to Gryffindor, I think. Now, move your telescopes down _away_ from Polaris, and you should find an open cluster..."

Harry was really impressed with Ron by the end of the lesson. He put his hand up for most of the questions, and while he got two or three of them wrong that didn't stop him from trying to answer the next one along either. Professor Sinistra seemed impressed as well, especially by the mention of the Andromeda _Galaxy_, and his question about whether they could look at the pictures from the Hubble had led to a ten minute interruption while Hermione and Justin from Hufflepuff tried to explain to the Professor what the Hubble _was_.

* * *

After another one of the odd late-to-bed late-starts that followed Astronomy class, and the day's classroom classes, it was time for their Flying lessons.

A lot of the pupils who had been doing especially well before Christmas were put through some particularly punishing testing, making sure they could climb and dive and turn and stop suddenly when Madam Hooch fired off a cannon-blast from her wand. While Harry and the others watched, the young flyers in question got asked to hover straight up and straight down, to reverse, to demonstrate that they could cling on when their broom went upside-down and then to do all the same thing while holding a conversation with the flying instructor.

"Congratulations," she announced, at the end of that. "Mr. Finnegan, Mr. Zabini, Miss Parkinson, Miss Patil, Mr. Weasley, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Davis. I am pleased to inform you that you will not be required to attend future flying lessons, as you are qualified to use a broomstick with competence."

Harry applauded, and that spread to most of the rest of the flying class, and as Ron flushed with happiness and Hermione examined her broom suspiciously most of Harry's attention was on the tests he'd just seen.

Doing some of them would be quite tricky for him without a broom, especially reversing. Maybe he'd have to stick to using two brooms whenever he needed to do any serious flying…

* * *

Professor Quirrell's Defence lessons seemed to be deteriorating. Harry's headache in them was worse, and so was the Professor's stammer, and he spent the whole of the lesson one Thursday talking about how dangerous the forests were in Albania instead of the _expected_ lesson topic (which was the Dancing Legs jinx).

It was puzzling, but there was still a textbook to read and there was still homework to do, and half the school was starting to get really excited about the next Quidditch game. After Hufflepuff had done horrible, horrible things to the points totals of Ravenclaw in December the first game of the Spring Term was Gryffindor against that very same Hufflepuff team.

"Fred and George are really tense," Ron said, looking across the room at his twin brothers one evening.

"Really?" Neville asked. "How can you tell?"

He looked back down at his essay, where his discussion of the Goblin Rebellion of 1771 had been impaired by his absently writing 'how can you tell' in the middle of a line, and flipped his quill over to stroke away the offending ink.

"Now that's not fair," Ron grumbled good-naturedly. "Hermione's refused to do it for me and I really need to work out how to enchant a quill to do that myself… I'd get it done by now if it wasn't for all those essays."

"It is helpful for the essays, though," Harry supplied.

He was checking the history book for some of the things before and after the 1771 rebellion, trying to work out just why it was that that particular rebellion was viewed so favourably compared to the others. Maybe it would help if he had a Muggle history book as well, but that wasn't the sort of thing there was in the Hogwarts library.

"Fred and George?" Neville prompted, putting his quill down. "I'm really curious now. They're just laughing and joking like normal."

"Not like normal," Ron replied. "It's hard to explain, but if you'd grown up with them you'd know. Their timing's off."

Harry couldn't see a difference, but trusted Ron enough to know.

"So that's going to be… because of the Seeker, right?" Harry guessed.

"Well, Hufflepuff's Seeker is pretty good, but it's more about the Chaser team," Ron explained. "The girls haven't really got it together yet, and if you've got a good _enough_ Seeker you can sort of power through it based on that because you can make the game short enough that the Chasers don't really count. But given what Diggory is like as a Seeker he'll probably be the one getting it."

Harry nodded at that. "Okay, so if we had a really good Seeker then we might be able to win, but we don't."

"Well, we might win anyway," Ron said, and Harry almost laughed as he remembered Ron's unstinting loyalty to a team which was arguably only slightly better than not fielding a side at all. "But it'll mean Fred and George have a lot of work to do keeping the Bludgers interfering with Hufflepuff play."

He frowned back down at his own History homework. "What's the name of that goblin who went on a Chocolate Frog card, again?"

"Urg the Unclean," Harry supplied. "That was 1771. He got publicly dunked in the village pond… and I'm pretty sure that was after the Statute of Secrecy, so it must have been Hogsmeade pond."

He frowned, then dug his _History of Magic_ out. "Unless the Statute was actually broken, that might be why people think it was justified in the first place, hold on..."

Using a wing to keep his place in the book he'd been reading, he flicked through and then nodded. "There we go."

"Great," Ron smiled. "Thanks."

He looked around. "Where's Hermione?"

"I think she said something about wanting to learn another new spell," Harry supplied. "About how she could do the History homework later."

"Blimey," Neville said. "Is she ill?"

Harry considered that, thinking about Hermione's behaviour and how she'd looked at dinner, then shook his head. "I don't think so, I think it's just that you can't work in the library after curfew but you're allowed to work in the common room."

"Oh," Neville realized. "Um… that does make sense..."

"Actually, that does make me think," Ron said, finishing a paragraph and putting his own quill down. "Why exactly is it that only Ravenclaw has a library?"

He waved. "_We_ could do with a library for doing homework after curfew. I don't know if Hufflepuff has anything special, but I bet Slytherin has… a torture chamber or something."

"A what?" Dean asked, looking up from his West Ham football annual – a present from his dad, Harry remembered. "Why would Slytherin have a torture chamber?"

"For torturing people," Ron answered, shrugging. "Obviously."

"Who would they be torturing, then?" Harry asked. "Other Slytherins?"

"Nah," Ron shrugged. "Think about it. _Hufflepuffs."_

Neville began mumbling under his breath, and Harry shook his head.

"Do you really think that they'd be, what, sneaking out after dark and taking Hufflepuffs to torture?" the dragon asked. "Doesn't that sound a bit unbelievable?"

"If it's Slytherin, you can't trust them," Ron said firmly. "Look at Malfoy."

"Draco's not untrustworthy because he's a Slytherin," Dean replied. "He's untrustworthy because he's a git."

"Did you say Hufflepuffs just because they're the only group you don't know many people from?" Neville asked. "Is that because you're always paired with Hermione or Dean in Herbology? I think everyone's really nice there."

"Yeah, but they're so nice they don't want to complain about being tortured in the Slytherin torture dungeon," Ron insisted. "They're just too brave to make a fuss."

"That doesn't even begin to make sense," Dean began, then stopped. "You're having us on, aren't you?"

Ron nodded, trying not to laugh.

"Prat," Dean grumbled.

Harry smiled, twitching his tail as he enjoyed the company. Then he read back over his essay so far, checking it against the little four-point plan he'd sketched out.

Just one bit to go, this one about how the rebellion had worked out. That was a bit he remembered, and he dipped his quill in the ink before beginning – only to look up only three words in as Hermione joined them.

"Harry, good news!" she announced. "I'm certain I've got the book-duplication charm working!"

That sounded like very good news to Harry, but he had to ask the obvious question. "Is that a charm that duplicates books?"

"What – yes, of course it is," Hermione answered. "It doesn't work on magical books because of how they're made, but – Dean, can I borrow your book?"

"It won't hurt it, will it?" Dean asked.

"...probably not," Hermione replied.

"Do it on your own book, then," Dean answered.

* * *

"All right!" Hermione said, putting a book down on the table. "Watch this!"

Neville looked at the clock. "It's been twenty minutes… how long did it take you to find the book to use?"

"Twenty minutes, obviously," Hermione replied. "It was quite a hard choice, I wanted one which would show off the capabilities of the spell without… well, without being too big a loss if I got it wrong."

"Now I'm _really_ glad I didn't lend you my annual," Dean said. "Okay, let's see this."

Harry leaned over to watch as well, and Hermione raised her wand over the book she'd selected – a copy of _The Winter's Tale._

"So you flick your wand back and forth between the book you want to copy and where you want the copy to go," Hermione explained. "And the incantation is _Xerographia."_

The book flashed, and suddenly there were two copies of it.

"That is pretty neat," Dean admitted, picking up the duplicate. "Er… are you sure you did this right?"

"I'm fairly sure," Hermione replied. "Why?"

"It looks like it's all misspelled," Dean replied.

As Hermione took it from Dean, the boy went on. "And your name's in it, look."

Hermione giggled. "No, that's right. That's where my parents got my name from. And the rest of it's because it was written in the seventeenth century."

She smiled. "So! My idea is, Harry, you just take books out from the public library, duplicate them, and then you return them. That way you have them to read more than once."

"Are you sure that isn't stealing or something?" Ron asked. "I'm sure that's why magic books can't be duplicated."

"Well, it probably is in the _magical_ world," Hermione replied. "But in the _Muggle_ world I'm pretty sure they don't have laws about this sort of thing for books – and in the Muggle world they have photocopiers which can copy books a page at a time. This is just doing things faster – and, besides, if you lose a book from the library you have to buy a replacement. This is just like that."

Harry did like the sound of that. If he wanted to share a book with his friends – or a Muggle book at least, like _Equal Rites_ or _Dragonsong_ – he could copy it, so they could have one _and_ he could have one as well! It sounded like an excellent idea, and he was already thinking about which book to duplicate first.

"Can you duplicate books that have already been duplicated?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," Hermione replied, seeming surprised that he'd have to ask a question like that. "That's why magic books have to be spelled against duplication, as they're all made by duplicating anyway."

That seemed all right to Harry, so he watched very closely as Hermione cast the spell a second time – giving them a third copy of _The Winter's Tale_. Then he tried the same spell, and the third copy caught fire.

"It's _Xerographia, _not _Xerographica,"_ Hermione corrected him, as he used his wing to smother the flames. "And I think your wand movement wasn't right. It's movement six, not movement eight."

Harry's next attempt did produce a book, but it was all in Greek. Hermione opened it to the first page of the script and compared it to the original, looking back and forth.

"I think this is actually properly translated," she said slowly. "I can't read much Greek, but I think that the names have been transliterated – Greek letters are all kind of odd – and the rest of it has some proper Greek words in it."

She looked up at Harry. "What did you cast?"

Harry frowned, thinking about it, then clicked his talons together to make a sound like a fingersnap. "I think I said _Xenographia_."

"...did you just invent a translation spell, mate?" Ron asked. "That's pretty cool."

"I've got no idea if I can do it again," Harry admitted. "Let's try and get the book copying spell down."

* * *

Five attempts later, they had a copy of _The Winter's Tale_ with all the words backwards, one which was in white letters on black pages, two with blank pages, and one that looked just like the original.

"I'll keep working on it," Harry decided. "I really want to make sure I've got it right before I start trying it on library books."

"That's probably a good idea," Hermione agreed, as Harry ate the smouldering remnants of one of the duplicates. "Now, what was it I was forgetting..."

"The history homework?" Dean suggested.

"Oh, that's right!" Hermione realized. "Well, I'll do it now."

She went upstairs to get her parchment and quills, and Ron looked at his wand and then at the books on the table.

"_Xerographia,"_ he tried, and Harry stared as a bright orange copy of _The Winter's Tale_ appeared.

"Did you mean to do that?" he asked, remembering that Ron's favourite team used that as their colours, and Ron nodded proudly.

* * *

The next day was the Quidditch match against Hufflepuff, which took place in light rain with ominous clouds hovering in the background.

Harry spread both his wings out, letting his friends take cover under them, and they watched as Hufflepuff's well-coordinated team got to work – their Beater captain giving terse instructions one way and then another as the Badgers' Chaser team pressed up the field. Katie, Angelina and Alicia were doing their best to keep things under control, but the Hufflepuff players seemed to be really good at passing the Quaffle back when their in-possession player was in danger.

There was one move which made everyone gasp, when one of the Weasley Twins bounced a Bludger off the Quaffle to send it back upfield for Katie to catch, but that just earned them a single goal for ten points – the Gryffindor Keeper, Oliver, was doing his best but Hufflepuff was racking up the goals, one after another, with the relentless precision of a highly drilled team and outscoring Gryffindor perhaps two to one.

The game dragged on, and when Neville began to shiver slightly Harry drew his wings in a bit to bring all his friends closer to his body heat. Then Dean deluged them all with bluebell flames, which sort of made that problem moot, though being rained on was still a bit uncomfortable even if they were now all toasty-warm.

Finally, after over three hours and something like a four hundred point deficit for the embattled Gryffindor side, Cedric Diggory held up his hand in victory with the Snitch firmly clasped within.

* * *

"That was awful," Fred groaned, that evening.

"Yeah," Other Fred agreed. "We found Oliver Wood trying to drown himself in the shower."

Harry wondered how that would work.

"We haven't won since Charlie left," First Fred agreed.

Ron blinked. "What?"

He pointed at his twin brothers. "What are you talking about? Charlie left last year. He's only seven years older than me and only _five_ years older than you. You won last year! You're the reigning champions!"

"...so we are," Second Fred realized. "I'd completely forgotten that. Why do you think that is, Fred?"

George put his hand to his chin. "I daresay that it's because Wood's completely round the bend and complains about it constantly."

"So he is, Fred," Fred agreed. "That makes perfect sense. I don't know why I didn't think of it."

"That's because your mind is too highly trained, George," George said. "Our simple brother thinks of the simple solutions."

They exchanged glances.

"Which of us should go and get Wood out of the shower?" Fred asked.

"You left him there?" Dean said, surprised.

"He was very insistent," George shrugged.

"Totally inconsolable."

"Also totally insoluble," George added. "With how long he's been under the shower he'd have to be."

"I wonder how he'd react to being told he's still technically the reigning champion Keeper?" Fred asked.

"Probably try to commit ritual suicide with a bar of soap."

* * *

Despite the best efforts of Oliver Wood, the calendar continued to march on. January became February, and Harry noticed on his way back from the library that Neville was running up the stairs and huffing alarmingly.

"Are you all right?" he asked, concerned. "Are you late for something? I thought our schedules were the same."

"Oh, hah… no," Neville replied, stopping and leaning on his knees. "I decided… to try… and exercise."

Harry frowned, thinking about that a bit.

At first he wondered why Neville might want to exercise, because _he _certainly hadn't enjoyed it much. Then he remembered that flying was sort of just a different form of exercise, and so was going up and down the stairs all the time, both things he did a lot more than Neville.

And there was that Neville didn't fly by waving things around very fast, as well. So even if Neville flew a lot it wouldn't necessarily help.

"That sounds like a good idea," he said instead. "Are you planning anything to exercise your arms?"

"You have to exercise different bits?" Neville asked, now with more of his breath back.

"I think so," Harry replied, thinking about it. "I'm almost sure of it, yes, that's why you can have someone who's good at running but can't carry a really heavy weight."

He flicked his tail. "But maybe what you should do is just start by getting your legs fit, and you can do your arms after that?"

"It's hard enough to do this," Neville admitted.

"Maybe you should ask Dean?" Harry suggested. "I know Muggle schools have a lot of sports, and I think he did more than me."

Neville looked thoughtful, then turned to look up the stairs. A few deep breaths, and he was on his way up again.

* * *

The next morning, Harry was off to Fort William. While there he asked for a library card, but was nonplussed when he was told that he'd need to bring in a photograph and also his address.

Somehow he thought that giving an address in _Surrey_ wouldn't work very well for a librarian in Fort William, and then there was that if he did make a mistake and they sent a bill for late fees to Number Four Privet Drive he didn't know _what_ Uncle Vernon would do. (Apart from turning a funny colour, which Uncle Vernon did a lot. It was like Pernese dragon eyes, except mostly colours like 'puce' and 'magenta'.)

Oddly enough, on the way back he spotted what looked a lot like a football game going on on one of the Hogwarts lawns. But it didn't seem like it was a big deal, so he shrugged and flew on.

Book Club was coming up, and he wanted to be ready for it – and to put his latest purchase in his collection, a book called _Expecting Someone Taller_ which sounded sort of like Terry Pratchett's books to him.

Landing in the Owlery, Harry said hello to Hedwig (who gave him an affectionate nibble on one of his talons) then made his way down through the stairs to cut across to Gryffindor Tower. Then it was right back up the stairs, seven flights this time, and he put his book with the rest of his collection.

Seeing it, however, made him frown.

It was quite a big collection by now, with several new books on top of what he'd brought from home at the start of the school year, and it really was too big to all go back in his trunk without squashing everything.

Sitting down on his bed, tearing a hole in one of the sheets with an accidental talon but barely even noticing any more, Harry thought about his problem.

It was a nice sort of problem, the sort of problem that gave him a happy feeling to think about – last year the idea of having _too many_ things of his own would have been quite alien – but it was still a problem, and it wasn't until he thought about the book club book that he realized the solution.

_Around Africa By Broom_ had made it quite clear that Wizarding tents were bigger on the inside than they were on the outside (and Hermione had said it was like a 'Tahdis' but he didn't really understand what she meant by that) and also that they were fully furnished, and stayed that way if you packed up the tent. So Harry could buy a magical tent, carry it about easily, and keep his whole collection of things inside it nicely laid out the way he liked it.

He could even set it up back home in the Dursleys' loft. It really did sound like an excellent idea, if Harry said so himself.

* * *

One blustery morning in the middle of February, Harry took his usual place in Transfiguration class.

Professor McGonagall gave him a small smile, which she extended to the other students as well, and Harry got ready to take some notes.

"Good morning," the Professor announced, once everyone had arrived. "Today we will be dealing with one of the more subtle and complex arts of Transfiguration. While it is expected for your O. that you get reasonably good at Free Transfiguration, it is only at the N.E.W.T level that we approach this topic in a way that does not involve prescribed spells."

She pointed her wand at a piece of wood on her desk, and it changed shape into a kind of wooden hummingbird shape – a hummingbird which took off, picking up the chalk in its beak before slowly writing a word on the board.

The word was _ANIMATION._

"Animation is when an object is Transfigured such that it can move, if it would normally not be able to do so," Professor McGonagall explained. "It is difficult because it is a blend of Transfiguration and Enchantment, so you will also be seeing it in Charms, and because there is no spell which exists which has sufficient details in the _casting_ to completely control what the targeted object will do – you must specify these details yourself. It is dangerous because if you make a mistake in Transfiguring an object you will generally just not get the right object, which is bad enough; if you make a mistake in Animating an object you may well end up with an object doing something you would not like it to do, with great enthusiasm!"

After that dire warning, the Transfiguration Professor explained how they would be starting – with a spell to make an object, specifically a light wooden ball, move back and forth. The balls were enchanted with Cushioning Charms to ensure that they wouldn't do any damage if they went flying across the room, and all they were to do was to make the ball turn in some kind of circle on the desk.

It was much harder than Harry expected to keep it moving the way he was supposed to, and at least three other people somehow bounced their balls off his forehead, left wing or tail during the class.

It was also vaguely tempting to set one on fire after it barely missed his glasses, but that wasn't a nice thought so he ignored it.

* * *

After that lesson, Harry – and the rest of the remaining flying students – found that they were doing better in flying lessons. For some of them it was only a little better, and Vincent Crabbe nearly ran Neville down in what Harry guessed was a genuine accident, but Harry found that the same sort of mental focus involved with setting up what an animated object was going to do was helpful in controlling how fast a broomstick was supposed to go.

"Very good, Mr. Potter," Madam Hooch said, as he landed properly – having managed to use his wings for control and his two brooms for power. "Now we will make it a step harder, I'm afraid."

She commanded both brooms to 'unstick', and Harry watched with interest as she picked them up – moving them closer in to the centreline of Harry's body, putting them against his belly on the inside of his legs. The bristles almost touched, and it felt like it would make his neck a bit uncomfortable if he bent down by mistake.

"This is so that you get used to dealing with two brooms close together," Madam Hooch explained. "Once you're fine with this, we'll try a single broom again. Now, up you go."

* * *

Thanks to all the practice, Harry was better at flying with the two-brooms-close-together than he'd been when he started with the two-brooms-separated. It really felt like he was starting to get towards where he'd be able to fly with just one broom, if he wanted to.

Harry wasn't quite sure if he would do that, but it'd be nice to have the option. And it was what the lesson was, besides, so there was no real point in _not_ putting in effort.

After the flying lesson, however, Harry found himself at a bit of a loose end. He considered going back and reading a book in his room, or in the common room, but almost as soon as he took off he spotted a group of first- and second-year Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors making their way down to one of the lawns.

Curious, he banked around to see what was going on, and alighted next to some familiar faces – Daphne, Tracy and Blaise, who had set up a large and multicoloured carpet on a small hill overlooking the lawn.

"Harry, good to see you," Blaise greeted. "Read any good books lately?"

Harry nodded. "Hermione finished the book I got her for Christmas, so I've been reading it. There's a lot of really complicated court politics going on in it."

"That sounds like your house, Blaise," Tracey said.

"I don't see at all what you mean," Blaise replied. "On an unrelated note, want some hors d'oeuvres? Mother sent them."

Harry took one, which seemed to be made of cheese inside pastry. "Why did she send you these? I thought chocolate was more normal?"

"Probably, but she had them lying around," Blaise told him. "Leftover finger food from the wedding, I think."

"You mean this is three months old?" Harry asked, biting into it. "It doesn't feel stale."

"Well, no, there are spells for that," Daphne shrugged. "But I think you're thinking of a different wedding."

"Yes, my previous stepfather decided that Mother wasn't the woman for him," Blaise agreed. "Something about not liking her cooking, but Mother's always been very good with bitter almonds."

He waved his hand. "Anyway, that's not important. What is important is that we're going to watch the Lions and the Badgers run around until we're bored. Or until it starts raining."

Daphne put a Wizarding Wireless down on the carpet next to them. "And we're going to listen to this, as well. And we're going to _keep_ listening to it, even if we do have to go indoors, aren't we?"

"I don't see why you're so interested in how that ends," Blaise said with a shrug. "It's obviously based off-"

"Shut up, Blaise," Tracey interrupted him. "We know _you_ know how it ends, but the rest of us actually want the surprise."

She turned a dial, and the last minute or so of a musical performance by a Spanish band called _Variety Mágical_ played as Dean and Justin reiterated the rules of football for their… it looked like _eight_ a side… football game.

Dean had got hold of a spare Quaffle from somewhere, and the game that resulted did look a lot more dramatic. Harry lay down on his front in the wet grass, watching, and listening as the thing Daphne and Tracey wanted to listen to came on the Wireless.

It was a radio drama about two magical families who'd both moved to Australia in the late 1800s, and how they were getting on with living in a new environment where it was too far from their new homes out in the Outback to Apparate to just about anywhere important. Harry wasn't sure quite what was going on, plot-wise, and there seemed to be a lot of impassioned arguments involved, but it was a nice audio background to the floaty football game going on down the hill.

* * *

It was the morning of Valentine's Day – a Friday, which meant Potions, and which also meant plenty of speculation about whether Professor Snape would have them making _love_ potions – when Draco came over to the Gryffindor table with Vincent and Gregory flanking him.

"I knew you'd get in trouble sooner or later, Potter," he said, holding up a copy of the _Daily Prophet_.

"Good morning," Harry replied, determined to be polite even if Draco wasn't. "Is there something in the news? I'm afraid I don't get the paper, though maybe I should."

"You're not even supposed to _be_ here, Potter," Draco insisted. "You're not _human_, and it's only humans who are allowed wands."

Harry heard a ruffling sound behind him, and then Hermione tapped him on the shoulder.

"I think it's this," she said, handing him a borrowed copy of the _Prophet_ folded open to one of the inside pages. Harry took it, and saw that there was a half-page letter by someone called 'Disgusted of Uxbridge'.

It described Professor Dumbledore as 'bowing to the demands of inclusivity', mentioned Hagrid as a 'tragic example of the results of a short-sighted process' and noted that the law was clear that 'Harry Potter is clearly not a human, and the Wand Ban restricts the ownership of wands to humans, so it is clear that Harry Potter should not have a wand or be attending Hogwarts".

Draco was looking delighted by the time Harry finished the letter, and Harry raised a talon.

"Draco," he began. "How does the law define a human?"

The Slytherin blinked, looking confused. "Pardon?"

"I definitely had human parents," Harry went on. "So if that's what makes you human or not, I'm human."

"But you're _clearly_ not!" Draco insisted. "Humans don't have wings! Or scales! Or – or – _paws!"_

"Mr. Malfoy," Percy said. "Please allow Mr. Potter to finish his breakfast in peace."

Draco's fists clenched, then he stepped back a pace. "This isn't over, Potter," he added, turning to leave.

After he was gone, Harry wondered if Draco could prove that _Draco_ was human.

How exactly did you test that sort of thing in the magical world? Couldn't you just transfigure a cat into a human, and end up with a human who remembered being a cat? Their Transfiguration textbook warned that permanent human transfiguration was dangerous because the resulting animal would be only as smart as what they'd been turned into _should_ be, but in that case, if you turned a Sphinx into a human and a human into a Sphinx, which one of them was allowed a wand?

Of course, when he asked Ron that question, Ron decided that the Malfoy family had come about because of a Transfiguration on a particularly sleek-looking long-haired dog a few generations ago.

* * *

AN:

* * *

If you look at the books, Gryffindor show no signs of having a good Chaser team until third-year. Of the four games they play in the first two books, their Chaser team is badly disadvantaged twice, one game lasts less than five minutes and the game Harry skips they get "flattened".


	14. Dragooned Into Politics

It wasn't one of the better Potions classes Harry had gone through. About two thirds of the Slytherins in the classroom kept making snide comments about Harry, mostly quotes from the letter in the Daily Prophet, and Harry wondered vaguely if any of them knew who 'Disgusted' actually was.

The actual potion they were making, however, was the bigger problem – an antidote to love potions, it required the slow addition of petals from six different flowers over the course of half an hour with continuous stirring. That was too long for Daphne to keep up the stirring by herself, so she and Harry traded off the stirring process while the one who wasn't stirring rested their hand for a minute or so and then got onto the rest of the preparations work.

Then there was the fact that they'd nearly chopped up and added forget-me-nots too early in the process. That was one of the things the instructions specifically stated not to do, and Harry had only realized just how much what Draco said had been getting to him when he was halfway through doing the forget-me-nots twenty minutes early instead of the maple shavings the potion actually called for at that stage.

Professor Snape's only comment on it, when he saw Harry dumping the half-cut flowers and starting again, was that the potion could well have exploded and rendered everyone doused by it unattractive to all members of their preferred gender for six hours. (Harry wondered if he'd forgotten that they were all still eleven or twelve.)

The whole idea of a love potion made him sort of uncomfortable, but a 'hate potion' – if it could be called that – was hardly any better.

* * *

Before lunch, Harry had enough time to look something up he'd been meaning to get around to, and which the letter in the paper had reminded him of – the oft-mentioned rumour that there were Werewolves in the Forbidden Forest.

At first that had simply sounded silly, as Werewolves were normal people – usually witches and wizards – who turned into vicious creatures every full moon. So how could you say there were some in the Forbidden Forest?

But a bit of searching found the answer, in a mention of a unique event that took place in Germany in the sixteenth century. Apparently a werewolf had become involved with a female wolf during the full moon (and Harry didn't really want to know the details of that) and the resultant litter had been magically affected by having a wizard for a parent. Fully as smart as the average human, they lived to this day in the Black Forest, though the book noted that the specific section of the forest in which they lived had been made Unplottable.

After reading that, Harry thought it was a pity that the Forbidden Forest was – well – Forbidden. It would be interesting to meet fully-intelligent wolves with Werewolf ancestry, sort of like the Werewolves in the Silmarillion, and maybe find out if they could cast spells.

Of course, he'd have to be sure they actually were this kind of wolf first. Maybe he'd need to learn German, unless this whole thing had happened a second time?

Or maybe all wolves were intelligent and wizards had only checked that one time. Like the wolves in the _Belgariad,_ which were all perfectly able to hold conversations as long as you could speak wolf. Maybe most animals were able to speak normally so long as you knew their language, though if that was the case Harry had to admit he wasn't sure _how_ to speak those languages unless he found a way to turn into one – and perhaps not even then.

* * *

Naturally, finding the answer was easier than that.

"Oh, them," Hagrid nodded, once Harry had asked. "Yep. They're a neighbourly lot, moved here 'bout five years after I got taken on as keeper of keys and grounds. Only a couple of 'em speak any English, and not much of it, but they wouldn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it."

"You mean there's actual Werewolves in the Forest?" Dean asked.

"Weren't you paying attention?" Hermione chided him. "They're not Werewolves, they're something else."

"What do you call them, then?" Dean shrugged. "Wolves? But they're not wolves, they're something else from that as well. Maybe… um… lupines?"

"I know a feller name of Lupin," Hagrid shrugged. "He's not – well, best I don't say, to be honest, not mine to say."

"Maybe if I meet one I'll ask what they want to be called," Harry decided. "That seems like the only way to be polite."

He frowned, tapping a claw against his chin. "Why exactly _is_ there a big magical forest next to Hogwarts that we're not allowed into? It sounds dangerous."

"Well, it's not dangerous so long as you don't go in," Hagrid replied.

"But what stops the dangerous animals from leaving it?" Neville pressed. "It's a forest, there isn't a fence or anything..."

"Don't rightly know," Hagrid admitted. "But it can't be all that dangerous, or Dumbledore'd have done something. He's a great man, really is."

"I suppose so," Harry said, still frowning. "It just seems like it'd be safer to have the forest somewhere much further away."

"It is a bit like Mirkwood or Fangorn, isn't it?" Neville asked.

"What?" Ron, Dean and Hagrid asked.

"Are _either_ of you boys going to at least read _The Hobbit_ at some point?" Hermione asked. "We duplicated you a copy each!"

* * *

On Monday, Neville showed them a copy of the latest _Daily Prophet_ – he'd apparently decided to subscribe and sent off to do so by owl – in which there was a letter by a 'Concerned of Godric's Hollow' asking why, exactly, everyone was convinced that Harry Potter was a _dragon_ instead of being an _animagus_ with the form of a dragon. The letter pointed out that any Animagus was quite capable of adopting an animal form without the least bit of worry to their faculties, and that by all accounts Harry Potter was quite bright, while a human _transfigured_ into a dragon (or a dragon who hadn't started off as a human) would presumably tend to be not much brighter than the typical dragon.

Harry did wonder why these people weren't writing in using their real names. He also wasn't sure if he was an Animagus or not, but what little he'd read about the process made it sound very complicated indeed and he was sure he'd remember it if he'd done any of those things.

* * *

It seemed like 'Disgusted' had set off quite a discussion, because over the next few days there were letters from 'Confused of Diagon Alley', 'Fuming of Saint-Mary-le-Bow', 'Lost of Outer Mongolia' and 'Elphias Doge' all expressing their own opinions on the fact that Harry was a dragon.

_Confused_ wondered why exactly they thought there was a problem that the Boy-Who-Lived had a little physical peculiarity, since he was still the Boy-Who-Lived who defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named – a line of argument that left Harry wondering what exactly the name of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named _was_ as he still hadn't learned it. Then _Fuming_ asked why exactly anyone was considering giving a non-human creature special treatment no matter the reason.

Harry didn't like that letter – not because of _that_ sentiment, which he thought was probably sensible, but because it described him as 'insidious' which wasn't a nice thing to call anyone.

The letter from _Lost_ took Harry four readings to fully understand, and eventually he decided that the author _probably_ liked him. The letter took a view that was entirely against anything unnatural, but in the process of giving examples it moved from 'dragons with wands' smoothly through 'people who make house-elves do all the work' until it eventually reached 'and anyone who waves a wooden stick around to lift things into the air'.

It was probably a parody or something.

Then Elphias Doge asked why everybody was using all these puffed-up self-satisfied names instead of just saying who they were and what they thought.

* * *

While the debate was simmering away in the background, however, Harry still had classes to do and spells to learn. History of Magic was still dry, but Harry took notes wherever something was mentioned that didn't match up exactly to the textbook (which was fairly often, since the textbook was for most of their time at Hogwarts instead of just being for first-year and so wasn't all that detailed).

That did make Harry wonder if it would make sense to read a book about their current topic, to get a more detailed view.

Meanwhile in Transfiguration they continued slowly progressing in the field of Animation. There was a lot of work on the theory, and on different ways of making an animated object move – there were spells in Charms which specified what the object should have, like a pineapple gaining feet or a letter developing wings, but without a specific spell for it using Transfiguration to animate an object could mean making a choice.

Then the Professor used Transfiguration on five draughts pieces to turn them into wooden birds, and animated each one to demonstrate another aspect of animation – decision making.

The first bird just pecked at the ground every second or so. The second one sang a loud and complex song, but all it did was do that over and over until Professor McGonagall untransfigured it back to a draughts piece.

The third one would start singing when she tapped it on the back, then stop when she did it again.

"Simple instruction, complex instruction, simple reaction," their teacher explained, and tapped the fourth.

This one rose up into the air, flying about and circling her head, and when she moved it moved with her (she walked all around the class, letting everyone get a close look and listen at the singing, chirping bird) before finally stopping again when it was untransfigured.

"That one reacted to my movements," she explained. "And this one..."

Another tap, and the final bird started moving.

Rather than start singing straight away, though, it looked around – head moving from side to side in quick, jerking motions, a lot like a real bird.

Harry watched with interest as it chirped, took off, then landed on Parvati's desk. It began to sing, then stopped suddenly when the applause began.

"This kind of animation is a difficult art to master, because you have to think of how you want the result to act in any situation," Professor McGonagall explained, as the bird began singing again now the noise level was lower.

Ron raised his hand, and she called on him.

"Professor, I got something in a cracker last Christmas," Ron began. "It's sort of like a little stone griffin, and when I tap it with my wand it flies around and acts sort of like a pet. That's Animation of that last type, right?"

"Yes, Mr. Weasley," the Professor confirmed. "I know the sort. Bestiary Frakes of Diagon Alley makes them, he's really very good at making a long-lasting animated statuette of a magical creature or beast."

Seamus raised his hand. "Does that mean he could do a human?"

"Perhaps, but it would not act like a human," the Professor said. "Bestiary has a certain type of personality he gives all his creations, modified a little if they can fly, breathe fire and so on. But no, Mr. Finnegan, it could not do your homework for you."

"Darn," Seamus said. "Um, I mean, I never thought of that until you said it, Professor!"

Professor McGonagall just gave him a look.

* * *

"Professor?" Harry asked, next Friday.

"What is it, Potter?" Professor Snape asked. "I'm quite busy enough cleaning up before the next lesson, which will be the fourth-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. Some of them have a modicum of talent, and I will not see your demand for attention ruining their lesson."

Mentally translating that into 'go ahead and ask but be quick about it', Harry nodded. "I was wondering if you had any advice about what to do about what's in the papers."

Professor Snape stopped halfway through getting out some scarab beetles.

"I would have thought you'd be delighted to be in the newspaper, Potter," he said, silkily.

"Not really," Harry replied. "I'm a bit uncomfortable with all of it… I asked Professor McGonagall and she told me to not worry about it because Professor Dumbledore was dealing with it, but that didn't really help."

The Potions Professor looked at Harry for a long time, without blinking, and Harry was glad to see that his teacher was thinking carefully about what to do.

After about a minute Professor Snape rubbed his head with his hand.

"Professor McGonagall is correct," he said. "The Headmaster will doubtless be doing what he can in his own way. Aside from that, perhaps you could cancel your newspaper subscription?"

"I don't have one," Harry replied.

Professor Snape did the looking-at-Harry-carefully thing for about another thirty seconds. "You… don't have a subscription? Then what is the problem, boy?"

"Well, Draco pointed it out to me," Harry explained. "And now Neville has a subscription to keep track of what's going on, and it all makes me really uncomfortable. I'd much rather graduate Hogwarts without being noticed much."

He shrugged his wings, and Professor Snape's eyes slid to them before going back to Harry's.

"You'd rather… not be noticed," he asked. "You. Harry Potter. The dragon. Would rather not be noticed."

"Exactly!" Harry agreed, glad that Professor Snape understood so well.

His Potions teacher sat down a little heavily, and took some potion from under his desk. Harry recognized it as the headache-relieving potion they'd made in the previous two periods, though he wasn't sure whose brew it actually was.

"Subscribe to the Quibbler," Professor Snape told him bluntly. "Doubtless if you use that paper as your source of information you will soon forget all about this whole business."

Harry smiled, thanking him for the advice, and turned to leave as his Professor had a quick swallow of the potion. The first of the next class was just arriving as he left.

* * *

It took Harry a while to work out how to subscribe to the Quibbler, because the information he could get hold of on it all seemed terribly contradictory. Everybody said it was complete nonsense, though Harry wasn't really sure yet how to tell that apart from the normal nonsense of the Wizarding World as a whole, but he hadn't realized that that included simply getting hold of it.

Asking around got him some odd looks and eventually pointed at a fifth-year who read it, and there were subscription coupons on the back, but they asked whether he wanted to subscribe for one week, twenty-six weeks or fifty-two weeks.

As it was a monthly paper, that was odd enough, but the price per issue was a quarter of a Sickle (which Harry was pretty sure meant seven and a quarter Knuts). Maybe it was like old money where you had to cut up pennies to get half pennies?

Ultimately Harry decided to just ask for a whole year, and sent three Sickles in the envelope with his coupon. It looked like that would mean he'd be getting his first paper at the end of the month, unless subscribing for a year included the one for February if you did it during February.

With that done, Harry decided to spend the rest of Friday afternoon reading _Mossflower_. Dean had lent it to him, and it was fun seeing what the distant past of _Redwall_ was like – seeing Martin the Warrior as a mouse, rather than as a heroic figure.

Sometimes he read a bit out loud, even though the only other living thing in the room was Ron's rat. Scabbers had been pretty timid of him in the previous term, though it seemed like months of exposure had dulled that a bit, and Harry thought talking to him might be helping as well.

* * *

Over the weekend, Neville showed him another letter in the Prophet, promising that Harry would like this one.

As it turned out, Neville was absolutely right. This one was from a Mr. Lupin (who sounded like the same Mr. Lupin that Hagrid had mentioned) and Mr. Lupin explained in so many words how he had known James Potter and Lily Potter (neé Evans) and had met their infant son more than once. After that opening piece, though, he said that he would have had the same opinion had he never known his good friend James Potter – which was that the Wand Ban _itself_ was short-sighted and poorly formed.

_The proximate cause of the Wand Ban, enacted in 1631 before even the Statute of Secrecy, was that there had been a Goblin rebellion over the lack of representation that race had on the Wizengamot; in response, all Goblins were banned from owning wands in perpetuity, along with all other non-human magical races. The Centaurs were not involved in the rebellion, certainly, and no Veela or Kitsune was in the country at the time – and yet they were all punished as if they had been among the organizers, as are all their descendants and all Goblins to this day._

_If your readers compare this to the reign of terror of the self-proclaimed Dark Lord, then one sees the problem – would we really suggest that all wizards should be banned from possessing wands as the result of the actions of You-Know-Who and his followers? But how much worse would it be if we suggested that the one who delivered us from the terror should be stripped of _his_ ability to hold a wand?_

It was all very poetic, and quite moving, and only slightly spoiled by the short letter from an 'Odd of Ottery St' Catchpole' underneath which suggested that in fact Harry was only _pretending_ to be a dragon, and was in fact a perfectly normal dwarf wearing an elaborate costume.

That one was probably some kind of joke, or at least Harry very much hoped so.

* * *

Over the rest of February what passed for a normal routine at Hogwarts tried determinedly to assert itself. A few of the more unpleasant Slytherins tried to insult Harry, but he discovered that if they asked whether he was human it was usually sufficient to politely ask them if _they_ were human, and if so to please explain how to prove it. (He still hadn't found an official, legal definition, and while he hoped that one or another of the people who said things like that would actually have researched it there didn't seem to be any sign of it yet.)

Aside from that, Harry attended his lessons, and did his homework fairly soon afterwards. Depending on club activities or how his close friends interacted with their other friends he sometimes spent time reading in the Ravenclaw Library, sometimes in the main Hogwarts library, sometimes in the Fort William Library and sometimes in the Gryffindor Common Room; at other times he practiced flying, both with and without his twin-broomsticks, and even on one occasion helped Professor Kettleburn catch an Aethonan flying horse which decided to try and escape.

He also wrote a tentative letter to Remus Lupin, and a few days later Hedwig brought a reply in which Mr. Lupin had enclosed a wizarding photograph of his mother and father.

They looked exactly like they had in the Mirror of Erised, except for being slightly younger than the versions in the mirror (and less able to turn into dragons, presumably), and Harry couldn't thank him fast enough.

Really, the only thing that was any kind of problem for Harry during the first school term of 1992 – apart from the odd knowledge that his presence at the school had sparked off a political debate – was that he still couldn't get himself a proper library card and thus take books back to Hogwarts from Fort William. It was especially a pity because he'd found a new author who he liked, with a main character who was a wizard called 'Pug', but it was taking him weeks to read even the first book because he could only do it while he was actually at the Fort William library.

Then, on the first of March, his first _Quibbler_ arrived.

* * *

The _Quibbler_ was… odd.

The cover illustration was quite remarkable, showing a dragon (which looked like a Swedish Short-Snout, but with glasses) eating an indistinct figure labelled as 'Prejudice'. It all looked very strange, and Harry opened the cover with some trepidation.

Inside there was a contents page, which included a section on Runes and two dozen articles as well as several double-page spreads which apparently consisted of nothing but pictures. Picking one at random, Harry turned over a dozen pages to see what the first article was like.

It was all about something called the Rotfang conspiracy, which was supposed to be a secret organization working within the Ministry of Magic to destroy it… by both Dark Magic and gum disease.

That didn't sound all that likely, but then eight months ago Harry hadn't known you could do magic at all. So he tried another one, which actually sounded much more reasonable.

This time it was accompanied by a picture labelled as being that of the head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, buying an Invisibility Cloak in Knockturn Alley.

The article asserted that this was the fifth Invisibility Cloak that Mr. Crouch had purchased in ten years, and asked what it was that he had to hide. It seemed a bit bombastic, but it did sound to Harry like there was sort of a point to it.

"What are you reading?" Hermione asked, and Harry shifted the _Quibbler_ to the side so Hermione could look at it as well.

She scanned the page, frowning, then turned it to see the cover. "That looks a lot like a tabloid, to me. My parents don't like tabloids – they're so full of nonsense."

"Maybe," Harry admitted. "The first story was about trying to destroy the Ministry of Magic by gum disease. But this one looks good enough."

"I suppose," Hermione admitted. "And it is good there isn't just one paper."

Harry turned to the next one, and they both stared.

"...that's saying that the _Daily Prophet_ is trying to get you out of Hogwarts because you'd be able to stop the Rotfang Conspiracy," Hermione said slowly.

Harry turned another page, and found one which said that the hero Peter Pettigrew – posthumous winner of an Order of Merlin – was actually alive and living secretly at Beauxbatons.

"Maybe he's a dragon," Hermione suggested, and Harry snorted. "But really, Harry, why _are_ you reading this? If any of it's true that's probably by accident."

"Professor Snape suggested it," Harry answered, tail flicking idly. "He said it would take my mind off the news."

He shrugged. "And it is kind of working."

Hermione looked conflicted. "How much was it?"

"I got a year's subscription for… about a pound," Harry said, converting the sickles into Muggle money in his head. "Maybe a bit less. So each one is about eight p."

Hermione still didn't seem to approve, as such, but she eventually left Harry with his paper – after reminding him not to believe everything he read in it.

Harry didn't think there was much chance of him believing everything in the _Quibbler,_ not when it asserted in one article that he was actually secretly a Sphinx who was disguising himself as a dragon and in another that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had survived but had changed careers and become an actor in Muggle performances in London.

Even if that latter article had some surprisingly convincing photographs.

* * *

It was during the following week that the end-of-year exams first came up as a serious topic.

Oddly, it seemed almost like there was some kind of coordinated plan involved. Mr. Lupin asked how Harry was doing with revising for his exams, reminding him kindly that he needed to make sure he knew the material from the whole year, while Ron asked Professor Sinistra how much extra credit he could get in exams for knowing about Muggle astronomy and space travel (a question she actually didn't know the answer to, though she said she'd ask).

Professor McGonagall warned them all in dire terms that they would not be able to advance to the next year if their exams were failed, and that they would have to repeat the year, while Professor Snape seemed delighted by the same idea (though Harry was sure it was a way to make sure his students paid attention). Apparently it was even possible to fail sixth-year exams so badly that you had to do sixth-year again, and Harry didn't like the sound of failing a year – not for him, and not for any of his friends.

Professor Binns didn't mention it, but then again Professor Binns didn't seem especially motivated to interact with any of his students except for marking their papers. So to help out, Harry did his best to summarize the important bits of the events for his friends (though it took a while, and he thought he wasn't doing nearly as good a job as the textbook did).

* * *

"Are you staying here for Easter, Hermione?" Dean asked, as March progressed towards April.

Harry listened with one ear, the rest of his attention on keeping track of the sixteen basic wand movements. He'd heard that one of the things in the exams might be asking them to cast a spell they'd never seen before, just based on the wand movements and the incantation, and he wanted to make sure that he'd got them all exactly right.

"Why would I not?" their friend asked.

"To see your family?" Dean suggested, and Hermione paused.

"Well… you're right," she agreed. "Sorry. But I really want to make sure I do well on the exams, so I was thinking of staying here. I'm sure my parents will understand – they've both been to university, so they know what it's like to have a lot of studying to do."

"What's university?" Neville asked.

Hermione dropped her book, which clattered to the floor.

"What do you mean, 'what's university'?" she demanded. "Are there no magical universities?"

"I don't think there is," Ron supplied, from where he was looking through magically duplicated copies of Harry and Hermione's History of Magic notes. "You're supposed to learn most stuff at school, then after that you become someone's apprentice. That's why Bill went straight into being a cursebreaker, he's apprenticing under someone called… Rakepick, I think. Not sure if they're a Goblin or not."

"You mean there's no higher education?" Hermione repeated. "That's…"

She huffed. "Well! It's certainly not what I expected."

"Excuse me," Madam Pince said stiffly. "Please be quiet in the library for the benefit of other library users."

She inspected the book Hermione had dropped on the floor, finding that it was one of Hermione's own and not one of the library ones, and gave her a level glare before striding off into the stacks.

Once she was out of sight, Dean spoke up again – his voice lower this time. "I just really want to… you know, remind myself what the Muggle world is like. I've got no idea at all how West Ham is doing, last I heard was just after Christmas."

"It's a pity there aren't Muggle sports on the Wizarding Wireless," Harry said out loud. "Just for you and the other people who like them. I know there's Quidditch, but Blaise told me yesterday that the game between the Holyhead Harpies and the Montrose Magpies has been going since February. So I imagine that one's kind of boring."

"...actually, I kind of want to hear about that one," Dean snorted. "What's the score?"

Harry frowned, trying to remember. "I think Blaise said it was Too Much for the Harpies, Not Enough for the Magpies, and that both sides were advertising for new Seekers during the breaks of play."

* * *

On the last day of term before the holiday, Hedwig flew down to Harry's table.

She deposited a letter from Mr. Lupin, accepted some bacon in tribute, politely declined Harry's offer of a fork, and took wing.

Harry started opening the letter, but he'd barely unfolded it when Hedwig arrived right back at his place – this time with a second letter.

"Where did you get this, girl?" Harry asked, as she took some more bacon. "And, come to think of it, how do you always know when Mr. Lupin or Hagrid want to send me a letter?"

His owl clicked her beak, then took off again, and Harry smiled – deciding it was probably an owl thing – before opening the second letter as well.

It was from Professor Dumbledore (Harry quickly checked, and the Professor was indeed sitting right there at the high table) and it told him that in three days' time the two of them would be going to London for a hearing at the Ministry of Magic.

It was scheduled for the middle of the afternoon, but the Headmaster also told Harry that they would be leaving at 8 o'clock sharp to make sure they weren't late.

The password for the Professor's office was apparently 'Tim Tams'. Harry didn't have the least idea what a Tim Tam was, but he was fairly sure based on guesswork that it was a sweet of some description.

* * *

AN:

* * *

That's the rest of Harry's second term for you.

If Harry was older, he'd probably be getting more involved in politics. But he's, well, eleven.


	15. The Dragon Clause

Harry had heard that one of the worst things to do when you were going to be having an important meeting was to be nervous about it.

Admittedly the one who'd given him the advice had been Draco, and it had been a bit uncharacteristic of the Slytherin boy, but it sounded reasonable.

Accordingly, Harry got a large chunk of his Easter Holidays homework done over the weekend. He skipped going to Fort William, enjoyed the Book Club, then after dinner on Sunday he re-read most of _All The Weyrs Of Pern_ and turned in at about ten in the evening.

* * *

Bright and early the next morning, Harry made his way to Professor Dumbledore's office. The gargoyle moved aside at the password, just as he'd expected, but by the time the moving staircase had taken him to the top Harry had a question.

Professor Dumbledore opened the door, and smiled. "Good morning, Harry. Very punctual, I see."

"Thank you, Professor," Harry answered, stepping in. "Um… if we have a minute, I'd like to ask something."

"We have many minutes, Harry, some of them even available for free," Dumbledore replied. "Though I must commend you in not asking the question of whether you may ask a question, which has tripped up many before you."

"Well… why is it that so many things in Hogwarts are handled with passwords?" Harry asked. "Like the door to your office, instead of just having it ask you. Or the Prefects' bathroom – Penelope told me that there's a password to get into that."

"Ah, yes," Dumbledore smiled. "I think it's because it's just more fun that way. I admit that I do not recall when the idea first came in, but it lends a little entertainment to getting around, don't you think?"

That did sound like the sort of thing Wizards would do to Harry, and he nodded.

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced. "I'm glad we've had such a productive discussion. Now, I'm afraid Fawkes is a little poorly today on account of bursting violently into flames last night, so we'll be travelling by Floo."

He waved his wand at the fireplace, and it sprang into roaring life.

"I believe you've used the Floo, Harry?" Dumbledore added.

"Yes, Sir," Harry confirmed. "I've been wondering if I could make my flame breath do the same thing."

"A fine project, though perhaps a little advanced for first year," Dumbledore told him, and waved Harry forwards. "We will be going to Diagon Alley, and I believe from there we shall walk to the Ministry of Magic."

Harry nodded, then paused and looked at Dumbledore's clothes. "Sir, do you mean we'll be going out on the streets?"

"Most likely," Dumbledore mused. "I suppose it is possible that we could walk through the London Underground instead, but I fear the trains would get in the way."

Harry shook his head. "That's not what I mean, Sir. I mean that I think that Muggles will probably notice you when you're wearing robes, a purple cloak, and high-heeled boots."

"Goodness, is that so?" Dumbledore asked, sounding delighted for the advice. "Do you mean they will see me as dashing, or simply as obviously strange?"

"I'm afraid it's the second one, Sir," Harry explained. "I think if you had a long coat that would work better, and maybe if it was mostly brown or black."

"Ah, brown and black," Dumbledore said, considering, and waved his wand to conjure a mirror. "I do wonder why it is that so many people prefer dark colours..."

Another spell, again without any spoken words (Harry was very impressed) and Professor Dumbledore's purple cloak changed into a dark brown raincoat.

It was much better, and while Harry would have _noticed_ the Headmaster walking down a street in London he wouldn't have done more than that.

Then they went through the Floo. Harry flared his wings as wide as he could as he arrived in the Leaky Cauldron, and that helped stabilize him – so he only stumbled a little on landing.

* * *

After a quick breakfast at the pub – Harry had a large pile of waffles, which was something he hadn't tried before – they went out into Diagon Alley.

"Why did we come here hours early, Sir?" Harry asked.

"Oh, I just thought it would be nice to have a day out," Dumbledore explained pleasantly. "And do some shopping. Do you have any shopping to do, Harry?"

"I do want to get a tent," Harry said. "And probably some more books."

"A tent?" Dumbledore repeated. "Goodness, I didn't take you for a fan of camping, Harry. But then I suppose everyone has a hobby."

"It's not really for camping, Sir," Harry explained. "It's more to keep my things in. I've already got a lot, and my trunk's too big and heavy to fly with. But if I could put everything in a tent, or in a backpack, then I could carry the tent and it'd be easier for me to get to and from the station without troubling my aunt and uncle – and it would mean I'd have more space."

"That all sounds very sensible of you, Harry," Dumbledore told him, and Harry tried not to preen. "And do you have any other shopping to do? I myself would like to pick up a brand-new astrolabe, along with an orrery I have had my eye on for quite some time, but since nobody has got me one for my birthday for the last eighty years I decided to treat myself."

"I didn't know it was your birthday, Sir," Harry apologized.

"Oh, no, it's not," Dumbledore chuckled. "But I don't see why I should wait until August to treat myself once I decided to."

That sounded sensible enough to Harry.

"I was thinking of getting some books," he added. "And some Muggle money from Gringotts as well, so I could buy more."

"Of course," Dumbledore agreed pleasantly. "Though I might warn you that, when you have too many books, you will long for the simple delights of socks instead."

"I really don't think that will happen, Sir," Harry politely disagreed. "I don't think there's such a thing as too many books. I can always use the ones I don't want to read to lie on."

* * *

Harry quite enjoyed the morning he spent with Professor Dumbledore, both because it was a chance to do some shopping in Diagon Alley and because the Professor was quite amazingly knowledgeable on just about all aspects of magic – from Alchemy to something beginning with Z.

It could have turned into a lecture, during the time they spent not in Gringotts or in the book shop, or in the various other shops they visited, but Dumbledore spent as much time asking Harry about things Harry could tell _him_ as the opposite.

He wasn't really sure whether or not Dumbledore already knew all the things he was asking about, but it was quite fun anyway to explain to the headmaster about why _Reaper Man_ was funny or how Belgarath the Sorceror's wife was who he described as a reverse wolf animagus.

The time really did pass quickly, and Harry had to admit that he enjoyed how more people came to say hello to Dumbledore than came to say hello to him.

He might be a dragon, but Dumbledore was _Albus Dumbledore._

* * *

"Sir?" Harry asked, suddenly remembering something he'd wondered about a while ago. "I wanted to ask – what's a Grand Sorc?"

Dumbledore put down the glass ball he'd been looking at, which contained a model of Saturn and all its rings, and smiled down at Harry. "Well, as you are doubtless aware, though may wish to confirm, it means Grand _Sorcerer_. As to what a Grand Sorcerer is, I confess that I have no idea."

"You don't?" Harry blinked. "But… you _are_ one."

"Indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "And I wish to this day that when I was told that I was one I had asked precisely what it was."

Harry had to hastily swallow a giggle, and Dumbledore twinkled.

"So it's just something you were told you were one day?" Harry added, once he was sure he wouldn't laugh.

"Well… I do have an idea or two, I would say," Dumbledore said, raising a finger to his extravagantly bearded chin.

Harry tilted his head in anticipation, and Dumbledore winked at him before continuing. "One possibility is that it simply means that I am quite good at magic. While another is that it means I have created a Sorcerer's Stone."

"What's a Sorcerer's Stone?" Harry asked.

"I don't have the faintest idea," Dumbledore replied. "I believe that our cousins across the Atlantic may know, but I would not care to guess – that is surely for them to tell."

He smiled. "Though I believe that in the tale of Babbity Rabbity, a fine old Wizarding fairytale, the Muggle pretending to be a Wizard is called a Grand Sorceror. So perhaps it means I am no good at magic after all."

"That's a lot stranger than how it works at Unseen University," Harry said, thinking about it. "People there have all kinds of titles, and they organize Wizards into levels. But Witches don't have any titles except for things like 'Granny' or 'Nanny', they're all equal."

He paused. "And they all know Granny Weatherwax is in charge."

Harry was delighted when that made Dumbledore laugh out loud. It wasn't really his joke, it was definitely one of Mr. Pratchett's ones, but he was sure he'd told it quite well.

* * *

After Professor Dumbledore was loaded down with astronomy equipment – which all seemed to vanish into his pockets a bit at a time after he'd paid for it – they moved on to getting Harry's tent.

There was a quite amazing variety of tents, ranging from a very simple 'Muggle-safe' tent which was just a tent charmed impervious to the cold or to rain, all the way to a fifteen foot castle which looked like it was larger on the inside than Harry's primary school.

He didn't want anything nearly as complicated as that, and it wouldn't fit in the attic at Privet Drive anyway, but that still left a lot of choice. Several of them had kitchens with ovens and fridges installed, living rooms were common, and there was even plumbing (though that left Harry very confused as to where all the results would actually go).

"You'll need to provide water for those yourself," the shop owner explained, pointing out where the water could be put. "Normally you'd be able to use a spell, of course, but you're still in school so that's not an option when you're out and about I suppose."

"You can make water with a spell but not food?" Harry asked.

"Quite," Professor Dumbledore was happy to explain, and the shop owner jumped a little as if he'd forgotten his old headmaster was right there. "Water is simple enough, you see, and there's a spell for it, though the water one conjures is never quite so tasty as water from another source."

"I should be okay," Harry decided after a bit, thinking about the taps at Privet Drive (not to mention the kitchen there). "Is there one with a big storeroom?"

"Ah, um, yes," the shop owner confirmed. "There's two in the back. Got a lot of stuff, I suppose?"

"I want to make sure I don't run out of space," Harry clarified.

"Well, then, let's have a look," the shop owner decided. "Let's see… here's one of them..."

He waved his wand, incanting '_Erecto!_' and the tent was up in moments.

* * *

Harry found himself presented with a choice of décor, which was the main difference between the two tents when all was said and done. They both had two conventional bedrooms, a bathroom, a sitting room, a kitchen with a small table, and a large storeroom with shelves lining the walls. (Harry mentally labelled that particular room the library in both cases.)

As for the differences, one of them was… certainly consistent. It was all patterned in various shades of beige, on the carpets and walls and the worktops, though the beds and chairs were thankfully more of a deep brown so they could be discerned.

The other had wooden floorboards everywhere except the bedrooms, which were carpeted in a rich blue, and all the furniture was plain pine and mahogany (though the sofas had plump green cushions on them).

Harry found himself preferring the second one, not least because he felt like it was easier to tell where the wooden floors met the white-wallpapered walls than to tell where beige met beige. The idea of lying there over the summer months, reading through his library, was deeply pleasant, and if he left the door open Hedwig could fly in and out – the opening wasn't enormous, but it was big enough to fit her wings through.

The unfortunate thing was that he couldn't really explain it all to the Dursleys, but this would probably make it a lot easier for them to handle having him in the house.

Thoughts of the Dursleys led Harry to ask what other charms there were on the tent, and the shop owner explained proudly that it was charmed Unbreakable, as well as having a lock that only responded to a specific key, then added pointedly that none of it was flammable.

Pleased by that extra point, Harry decided to go ahead and buy the wooden-floored tent. It cost a little more than he'd been expecting, but it was manageable, and Harry finally walked out of _Accoutrements For The Wand-Ering Wizard_ with his new summer home packed up to about the size of a dinner plate.

He'd want to try putting it up a few times at Hogwarts, just to make sure he could do it, though. Even if that meant 'indoors'.

* * *

All too soon, however, it was time for lunch.

Dumbledore got them both expansive triple-tip sundaes from an ice cream bar, Florean Fortescue's, which was the first time Harry had actually had any ice cream – Dudley had had it a lot, but he'd never been got any.

It was very nice, cool and refreshing, and though perhaps that might have been a better fit on a hot day instead of the slightly dreary weather of a typical British Spring Harry couldn't bring himself to mind that much.

"Something I was wondering about, Sir," he said, after biting off some of the caramel-swirled tip of his sundae. "I can see the sky overhead, but what would happen if I flew up there?"

The Professor smiled. "Ah, an incisive question, Harry."

He negligently waved his hand at his own sundae, leaving his spoon sticking out of it. "You see, if you took off you could certainly leave – I do believe you'd come out over the Embankment Gardens – but you would need to turn around and trouble Tom at the Leaky Cauldron to come back in again. The charms involved are a little complex, I am afraid, but the idea is that it's… sort of a trade, you see. Light and rain and so on, they can come in, but it cannot be seen from the outside and it cannot be entered either."

Taking his spoon again, he took a mouthful of his peanut-butter tip as Harry absorbed that.

"Of course, we do quite well from both sides of the trade, you see," he added cheerfully. "And I must say, the wizards who put the spellwork over it did a truly marvellous job. It's been hidden entirely since Sixteen Eighty-Nine, and not once have the charms shown the slightest sign of intermittency."

"Is a lot of magic like that?" Harry asked. "Swapping things, I mean."

"Oh, some things, some things," Dumbledore told him. "Such as the Fidelius Charm. You can hide yourself from the world, but not from one person… and that is the person in whom you place your trust."

That topic seemed to make Dumbledore a little sad, so Harry decided to change topics. "What's the Ministry of Magic like?"

"Well, I might say it is a collection of Witches and Wizards," Dumbledore mused. "And one in which most of those involved do quite a lot of paperwork. So I would venture to say that it is quite an odd place indeed."

He produced his wand, and cast a wordless spell which caused numbers to float in the air for a moment. "And I see that if we are to be on time, we should perhaps not take too long on our lunch."

Harry was about to swallow the rest of his ice cream in one go, but Dumbledore held up a hand. "You misunderstand, Harry. I meant we should take no more than another hour."

"I don't think I've ever had a lunch that lasted more than an hour," Harry replied.

"It can be quite a pleasant experience," Dumbledore told him. "I recommend it one day."

* * *

They finished their sundaes, and made their way out onto the streets of Muggle London. Harry had taken the precaution of putting on his weather cloak, as well as his robes, and so he looked like he was perhaps a little overdressed for the weather but nothing more.

Professor Dumbledore stood out a little more than Harry had expected, even with his more drab clothing, but it wasn't too bad – and it wasn't all that far to walk, either, taking them perhaps twenty minutes of actually walking and another five minutes waiting to cross roads. It was a bit further than anything was in Hogwarts, perhaps, but it was also a lot less 'up'.

"There is an awful lot of traffic, isn't there?" Dumbledore commented to Harry, as they waited to get across the complicated roundabout where Charing Cross and Whitehall met. "I do sometimes forget just how many people there are in London."

"It's a lot busier than Surrey," Harry had to agree.

They took a few minutes to admire the Admiralty Arch, because they were in no hurry, and then Dumbledore led him to a small and out-of-the-way alley which looked like it was the most run-down place anywhere near Whitehall.

"This is the visitors' entrance," he explained, indicating a battered old red telephone box. "Shall we see if we both fit?"

Harry agreed, not sure if they could, but after a bit of squeezing they managed to sort of get themselves both inside. Harry's face was up against the door, and Dumbledore opposite him was facing the telephone.

"This is a bit awkward, Sir," he winced.

"So it seems," Dumbledore agreed, starting to dial the telephone. "Not to worry, we shan't be in here long. Ah… six, two, four, four, two..."

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic," said a pleasant female voice which filled the whole telephone box. "Please state your name and business."

"Albus Dumbledore," Dumbledore said clearly. "Chief Warlock. Here to escort Harry Potter, who has a hearing before the Wizengamot to help determine whether he should be allowed to carry a wand."

"Thank you," said the invisible woman (?). "Visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of your robes."

There was a clatter, and Dumbledore used his free hand to pass Harry the badge. It was shiny and silver, and Harry stared at it in surprise.

_Harry Potter, Philosophical Conundrum._

"It is always rather interesting to see what it comes up with," Dumbledore chuckled. "I remember I once came by this entrance – oh, it must be twenty years ago now – to talk with the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, and my visitor's pass said that I was 'Albus Dumbledore, Probably Responsible'."

That made Harry snort, and he pinned the badge to his robes as the female voice told him that he had to be searched and present his wand for registration. Then the telephone box ground slowly into the ground, going down like a lift for about a minute.

Then Harry saw the Ministry of Magic for the first time, though it was spoiled a bit by the fact that when the phone box door opened he promptly fell flat on his face.

It didn't hurt, though he did have to wave off an offer of help from Professor Dumbledore.

* * *

Harry wasn't sure quite what he expected there to be in the Ministry of Magic. What little news he'd seen on the television had suggested that government buildings were all full of serious people in serious offices doing serious things very seriously, while what he'd heard from Professor Dumbledore and seen of the magical world made it seem more likely to be a bit mad.

What there actually was on the entrance floor was a hall with dozens of fireplaces, all seeming constantly in use as people used the Floo to go back and forth, and a marvellous-looking fountain made of gold.

On a second look, though, the fountain seemed a little bit odd. It had three kinds of non-human Being, all of them looking with adoration at the wizard and the witch they surrounded, but from that Harry understood from his History of Magic classes – and his textbooks – that was only really accurate for the house-elf. Centaurs didn't like anyone who wasn't a centaur much, and he wasn't entirely certain that goblins liked anyone who wasn't currently paying them.

Though admittedly that might just be that most of the goblins people met were bankers, and most of the ones they read about were trying to rebel.

* * *

As Harry and Dumbledore made their way up to the main desk, the bustle of the Ministry slowly quietened down. People were still walking, but more slowly, turning to look.

Harry heard at least one muffled 'Ow!' from behind him, which sounded like someone hadn't got out of the fireplace in time and someone else had run into them.

It reminded Harry a bit of the first few weeks at Hogwarts, not knowing quite where to go and with people looking at him, though it did help that they were also still quite early.

He got his wand registered, which turned out to mean they checked what it was made of and how long it had been used, and then Professor Dumbledore led him through the crowds to one of the lifts.

"If it helps, Harry," Dumbledore said, as Harry sighed in relief, "I prefer to remember that, while for you and I to go outside and have people wishing to meet us is quite common, for the people who are meeting us it is not common at all."

Harry thought about that as the lift descended, and nodded – realizing it was certainly true.

He hadn't really thought about it that way before.

* * *

It turned out, when they reached the floor on which the Wizengamot met, that they were still over half an hour early.

Fortunately, there was a waiting room, and Professor Dumbledore took a seat while Harry sat on his haunches.

"Would you like something to eat, while we wait, Harry?" Dumbledore suggested. "Sherbet lemon?"

"Probably not a good idea, Sir," Harry replied. "I don't think a sneezing fit would help my case."

"Quite, quite," Dumbledore agreed, and rummaged around in his pockets. "Marble?"

The bag he produced was full of half a dozen round glass balls with little flecks of colour in them, and they were so like Muggle marbles that Harry paused and looked at them.

"Are they some kind of Wizard sweet I haven't met yet, Sir?" he asked.

"No, not at all," Dumbledore replied. "They're Muggle marbles."

Harry supposed that _did_ explain why they looked like Muggle marbles.

"I noticed a few weeks ago that you accidentally ate your glass of Pumpkin juice," Dumbledore explained. "So I thought I would get a bag of these, to see if you enjoyed them."

Quite willing to try, Harry took one in his talons and then popped it in his mouth. It shattered with a crunch, and he swallowed down the result before nodding.

"Ah, a success," Dumbledore smiled.

* * *

When they were called in, Harry was sucking on a marble to see if it would go the way of a gobstopper or something like that. He crunched it down, then followed the wizard who'd come to get them, and came out onto the floor of a large square room with wooden benches around three of the walls.

Dumbledore walked up to a podium, and announced in a cheerful way that by order of the Chief Warlock the Wizengamot session was begun.

Harry looked around at all the people sitting on the benches, noticing how they were all wearing plum-coloured robes with a silver _W_ on the left side of the chest.

One or two of them looked sort of familiar, like he'd met their relatives – which probably meant they had children at Hogwarts.

"Ah, er, Harry Potter," began a portly man. "You _are_ Harry Potter, yes?"

"Yes, Sir," Harry answered. "Is it Sir? I'm afraid I haven't done one of these before."

"Oh, that's quite all right, my boy," the portly man replied. "This is all to sort out a misunderstanding."

"A-hem," coughed a woman who sort of reminded Harry of Trevor, a little way around the row of benches. "Surely I must have misheard, Minister. A knowing violation of the Code of Wand Use is _far_ more than a _simple_ misunderstanding!"

She gave a silvery laugh, and Harry tilted his head slightly.

"You're the Minister of Magic?" he asked the portly man. "It's nice to meet you."

The toadish-looking woman seemed a little annoyed by Harry's reaction, and more annoyed by the way the Minister said the pleasure was all his. Then a woman about halfway around the row of seats inquired as to why exactly Harry was a dragon, and the best he could say was that it happened when he was very young.

"How did you stop He Who Must Not Be Named?" said a completely different wizard, and Harry had the strangest feeling of deja vu about these questions so far.

"I don't remember that, either, Sir," he had to answer. "It happened when I was only one year old."

The unpleasant-looking woman from before coughed. "I'm sorry if you don't know this," she said, her voice high and sweet. "But the Wizengamot is made up of very important people! It's not polite to boast, because their time is very important!"

Harry didn't think he'd been boasting.

"Ah, Mr. Potter – can I call you Harry?" the Minister asked, and Harry nodded. "Harry, do you remember _not_ being a dragon?"

"Yes, Minister," Harry answered. "Not very well, but I know I'd started school. I remember being very confused, but nobody noticed."

"Nobody noticed?" asked one of the people on a back bench. "How in the world could nobody notice?"

"I believe that is because they are Muggles," Dumbledore explained for Harry. "For some unknown reason, it seems that Mr. Potter appears _unremarkable_ to anyone who is not blessed with magic."

"That's right," Harry agreed. "And I just sort of assumed… that was something that happened sometimes and nobody much cared. Because everyone was okay with it."

"This all seems quite unbelievable to me," someone muttered.

"Are you an Animagus, Mr. Potter?" one of the other Wizengamot members asked.

That question made Harry frown, as he thought about what he'd read.

"I don't think so, Sir," he answered. "I've never brewed a potion anything like that complicated, especially not when I was about five years old, and I didn't carry a leaf in my mouth for months either. And I didn't have a wand."

The woman with the high voice looked like she was about to say something, but another Wizengamot member asked a question instead, and then another.

* * *

The questioning went on for at least half an hour, and it seemed as though every member of the Wizengamot wanted their turn.

Some of them asked Harry half-a-dozen questions, including Bartemius Crouch (from the Quibbler, though Harry didn't talk about that) and one Elphias Doge who Harry remembered from the letter in the paper.

"...quite capable of using your wand to full effect?" Elphias asked, following up. "For detail work?"

"Yes, Sir," Harry said. "Or, well, I'm still learning, but I've been able to cast all the spells I've tried so far – it sometimes takes a lot of work, though."

"Mr. Potter's marks at school are quite good," Dumbledore provided cheerfully. "His friends have a habit of making wonderful use of the spell to conjure bluebell flames."

"Most impressive," Elphias said, and sat down. Harry thought he heard the man say something like 'very exciting, wow' but by then someone else was standing.

"Mr. Potter," that witch said, sternly. "Are you in any way capable of proving yourself to be human?"

"I don't know, Madam," he replied, continuing with his assumption that Sir and Madam were the right ways to talk about all the Wizengamot members. "I haven't found out what the official definition of human is."

"Grandparents," the witch told him. "To be human, Mr. Potter, you must have at least one human grandparent."

That made Harry frown.

"Wouldn't that mean that if you have a human _grandparent_ you also have a human _parent_?" he asked.

"I believe it is because of the customs on what counts as pureblood versus halfblood," Dumbledore told him. "Interestingly enough this means that the children of two muggleborn parents are themselves considered muggleborn."

"Chief Warlock, I protest," the witch said. "You are allowing Mr. Potter to evade the question."

"My apologies," Dumbledore replied. "I saw a teaching moment, and I did not want to let it escape."

"Well… I _think_ all my grandparents were human," Harry replied. "But I've never met any of them, they all died before I was born."

"Perhaps-"

"This is all very sweet," the high-voiced woman interrupted, drawing a scandalized look from the witch she'd spoken over. "But none of it matters, because Mr. Potter is clearly not human."

"Dolores," the Minister said, a little surprised, and the woman – Dolores – kept going.

"It's obviously lovely that he's been allowed to play at being a wizard," she said. "But he really needs to grow up and accept that he's not human, and to give back that wand to whoever he stole it from."

"I didn't steal my wand, Madam," Harry protested. "I paid seven Galleons for it."

"It's lovely to see you again, Dolores," Dumbledore said brightly. "Do you know, I still remember when you were a first-year. How is your father Orford doing?"

"You _must_ be mistaken, Albus," Dolores replied. "My father is not Orford."

"Well, I can't remember any other Umbridge at Hogwarts," Dumbledore said. "And how is your mother, Ellen Cracknell? I remember her and your father both being terribly disappointed that your brother was born without magic."

Dolores looked like she was so angry she'd lost the ability to speak, which was quite strange to Harry because all Dumbledore was doing was asking about how her family was doing.

* * *

For the actual discussion to start again took quite a long time, during which there was a general uproar, and Dolores left the room in what Harry guessed was some level of 'dudgeon' – a word he didn't actually know the meaning of, but liked the sound of anyway.

The Minister for Magic looked quite perturbed by the whole thing, and when the discussion finally resumed it was Dumbledore (in his capacity as Chief Warlock, and possibly as Grand Sorcerer) who made the next suggestion.

"It seems to me that there are three possible outcomes from this meeting," he said calmly, and the last of the conversations died away to listen. "The first option is that we make the decision that Mr. Potter does not qualify as human, and thus we should take his wand."

That made Harry a bit nervous, but Dumbledore continued calmly. "This, I think, would be a mistake – because we cannot be sure that Mr. Potter is not human, and to strip away his wand could be a dreadful injustice."

"Well, of course," the Minister agreed, nodding along as if it had been his point in the first place. "Got to be sure about this sort of thing, quite sure."

"Then there is the option that we should decide to allow Mr. Potter to keep his wand, that is, to conclude that he is human," Dumbledore went on. "But I feel that this as well is not the right option, because Mr. Potter would then be in a state of worry – perhaps in the future a different decision might be made, and his wand might be taken away, and even if it were not he would doubtless worry."

That statement prompted some muttering, and after a few seconds of that the Minister spoke up. "But… I'm not sure I understand, Dumbledore," he admitted. "What's the other option? Either we say Harry Potter is human or we say he's not… unless you're saying we should just ignore it?"

"No, Cornelius, though that had crossed my mind," Dumbledore said. "But there is another option. We are the Wizengamot, and it is within our right to _change_ the laws as well as enforce them. I might suggest an exemption for Mr. Potter?"

Harry's glasses nearly came off.

"What?" he asked, shocked, just ahead of the same question from everybody in the Wizengamot chamber. It was actually quite impressive how the shout echoed around for several seconds, and after it had faded Dumbledore – still smiling faintly – asked Harry to speak.

"Well… I don't really want there to be a law that's just about me," he explained. "It'd be really special treatment, and I don't want that."

There was a general muttering of approval, and Dumbledore considered before snapping his fingers with a smile.

"Perhaps something slightly different?" he suggested. "I would propose an amendment to clause three of the Code of Wand Use – no non-human creature is permitted to carry or use a wand, excepting those who are in the process of undertaking or have completed an accredited magical education to O.W.L level."

Harry remembered that O.W.L was the equivalent of GCSEs, and that everybody had to get them anyway, so that didn't sound too bad. It also didn't mention him, even though it was obviously meant for him as he was the only one _doing_ an accredited magical education.

It sounded sort of sensible, at least as a way to avoid having to work out whether or not Harry qualified as human, and there was a lot of discussion and grumbling and more questions about what 'accredited' meant and whether the 'process of undertaking' covered time outside school.

It was maybe half an hour after Dumbledore's suggestion that they ultimately decided to accept the wording anyway, and with a quick vote it was carried into law.

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced. "I am glad to have had such a lovely afternoon's conversation with you all, my lords and ladies of the Wizengamot. Any other business?"

There was a long pause, and the Headmaster smiled. "Wonderful. In that case, I'll be off back to Hogwarts. Do pop in if any of you want to visit."

He turned to Harry, and spoke more quietly. "After all that, I'm quite peckish. Shall we have some Muggle food to celebrate? I've heard good things about a Scottish chef not far from here."

Amused by the idea of coming all the way down to London to eat Scottish food, Harry nodded – though he felt like heaving a big gusty sigh of relief that the stressful meeting was over.

It probably wouldn't do to set Dumbledore's robes on fire, though.

* * *

Harry had missed when Dumbledore had colour-changed his robes to a plum colour at some point, but on their way to the exit he switched them again so they were back at the 'Muggle-Safe' colour that Harry had decided on.

Then they took the phone box back to the street, where Dumbledore assured Harry both that he could keep his name badge (apparently Dumbledore had a whole collection of them in one of his drawers, ranging from 'Simply Passing By' to 'Wizard Avoiding Blizzard') and that the entrance was covered by a Muggle-Repelling Charm which kept them from being noticed.

It was some minutes after that – walking back through what was now shading towards being an evening instead of an afternoon, and through the beginnings of a rush hour that had Harry curling up his tail so nobody tripped or stepped on it – that Dumbledore revealed what he meant by 'a Scottish chef'."

* * *

"Is that not what the name means?" Dumbledore asked, with a delighted smile, eating a fry. "I must admit I was completely fooled."

Harry took a bite out of his own McDonalds burger, not bothering to remove the wrapping first.

"I think maybe the _family_ was Scottish, originally, of the person who started it. But it's an American company," he told the much older wizard. "And there's loads of them, they're all over the place. I think they're supposed to be in half the countries in the world."

"I believe I can see why," Dumbledore said. "It is really quite tasty, and prepared so quickly, and you can take it to eat anywhere. And they call it a happy meal, as well – how very positive."

He looked down Diagon Alley, as if looking for an empty shopfront. "Perhaps we should have one in here. I'm sure they would have plenty of business."

Then there was a flash of white light, which made Harry jump, and a silvery-white doe appeared in front of them.

"_Albus,"_ the doe said, in Professor Snape's voice. _"I just checked the third floor corridor. Someone broke in and got past the Cerberus."_

Dumbledore blinked, then frowned. "It seems we must cut our dinner short, Harry. Please take my hand."

Harry did so, and then Dumbledore vanished with a cracking sound.

"...Professor?" he asked, confused.

There was another cracking sound, a few feet away, and Professor Dumbledore appeared again. "My apologies, Harry, I quite forgot. We shall have to take the Floo back to Hogwarts."

* * *

AN:

* * *

Caution: contains Dumbledore.

Warning: do not attempt to fake own family history in front of Dumbledore.


	16. One Of Our Professors Is Missing

The journey back from Diagon Alley to the Castle by Floo was quite easy – or at least Harry landed without landing upside down or something like that. Professor Dumbledore nodded quickly to his phoenix before hurrying down the stairs, and Harry followed – first simply so he wouldn't be trapped in the office, and then because he was sort of curious to see how Fluffy was.

Since the Headmasters' Office was high up in the castle, that meant following the Professor down several floors and through a secret passage to reach the third floor – the same secret passage Harry had taken some months ago when he'd been tracking the Mirror of Erised – only to come to a halt at the third floor corridor.

The door was open, and Professor Snape was just inside with his wand held ready – but not pointed at Fluffy, who was sitting off to one side with all three heads hanging in shame.

"It was the one with the turban," the left head informed Dumbledore.

"I think he's the same one who tried to get past us last year," added the middle head. "The smell was dreadful – and really rather familiar."

"Put us to sleep," the right head growled, and scraped at some shattered wood and metal strings.

"That used to be an enchanted harp," Professor Snape told Dumbledore, then saw Harry. "Mr. Potter, what are you doing here?"

"Mr. Potter was with me, Severus," Dumbledore said mildly. "I hope his presence will not be a problem."

For just a moment, Professor Snape looked mortified, but that was gone so quickly that Harry wondered if he'd imagined it.

"I suppose he won't be a problem, so long as he doesn't get himself underfoot or require us to save him," the Professor drawled instead, so Harry did his best to look alert without looking overeager.

It was quite hard.

"Remember, Harry," Dumbledore added, his voice more serious. "Take the utmost care."

"All right, Sir," Harry agreed. "Professor, was there a password on the door?"

"Indeed, Mr. Potter," Professor Snape agreed. "But, of course, Professor Quirrell knew it, and so it didn't stop him."

As he spoke, Dumbledore waved his wand, and the trapdoor opened.

"Cover your eyes, please," he requested, and Harry did so. There were a few thumps on the floor as Fluffy turned around, probably because he didn't have enough paws to put them over all his eyes, and then the Headmaster spoke again.

"_Solaris."_

Even through closed eyes with his paws over them, Harry could suddenly see a bright red light. Fluffy yelped from two of his three throats, and it lasted for several seconds before fading away.

"Wonderful," Professor Dumbledore added, and Harry opened his eyes – seeing the tip of Dumbledore's wand still lit up, but not with the dazzling intensity from before. "It seems the Instant Darkness Powder has been burned off. It should now be safe to drop down."

He did so, and Professor Snape followed after a few seconds. More spellcasting came from within, roils of bluish flame lighting up the trapdoor from below, and Fluffy turned around with a whine before peering down.

"Do be careful, Harry," the middle head said. "I imagine Rubeus would be terribly upset if I let you get hurt."

Harry smiled in reply, then went down.

* * *

The traps they went through looked quite different to how they had before.

The room with the keys had a floor peppered with smashed and shattered keys, and the walls were pocked with spellbursts. Professor Dumbledore explained in pleased tones that it had been Mr. Thomas' idea here, and that the keys had all been charmed to come charging down on any intruder.

Harry noticed that the door was missing, and wondered uneasily what had come through.

Then there was the chessroom, where the chess pieces were stood silent in their rows but the scars on the walls and floor testified to a quite spectacular battle.

"Professor?" Harry asked. "This doesn't look right."

"Well spotted, Harry," Dumbledore smiled. "Yes, after the suggestions I had I decided the best thing to do would be to change the rules. This is actually a game of _shogi_, a Japanese game which is quite like chess but not exactly the same. However, it seems that my Defence Professor decided that the best form of Defence was attack."

Harry had never heard of that game, and he wondered if Ron would be interested in a change.

"How do we get through, Sir?" he added. "I don't play that game."

"Well, there is a simple way through this one as well," Dumbledore explained, and cleared his throat. "We are neutral."

Both of the serried ranks of shogi pieces stood to attention, then marched aside to leave the way clear.

"This doesn't seem very secure," Professor Snape said, as they walked through.

"I had to have some way to get through, didn't I?" Dumbledore asked. "I am quite good at chess, but not exceptional; I daresay that Harry's housemate Ron could give me a run for my Galleons. Perhaps I shall have to join the chess club and find out?"

"I thought you said this wasn't chess, sir?" Harry frowned.

"Of course," Dumbledore agreed readily. "So you can imagine how much worse I am at shogi."

* * *

The room after that contained a troll, which grunted at them and rubbed a bump on its head. Professor Dumbledore calmly waved his wand at it, and the troll rose into the air – hovering at least twenty feet above the floor, where it gave them no trouble as they crossed to the next door.

There was a curtain of purple flame across it, and Professor Snape gave them both small vials of the same potion Harry remembered from his last visit.

Then they entered the Potions room, and the Headmaster sighed.

"Oh, dear… what did you do, Quirinus?"

Harry turned from checking that the potions bottles were all the same as before, and saw there was nothing but a pile of robes on the floor.

"Did he take his clothes off?" Harry asked.

"I fear not," Dumbledore replied, waving his wand and casting a charm to examine the pile. "Especially since, as your good friend Mr. Thomas suggested, none of the bottles contained anything but Draught of Living Death. No, something much worse happened here."

He looked at the coloured lights that rose from the pile of robes, then rummaged through them and picked up a wand. Harry recognized it as the one Professor Quirrell had used in class on the few occasions he'd cast a spell, and the Headmaster flourished it with the words _'Priori Incantatem'_.

The image of a potions bottle floated out of the end, and Professor Snape watched it.

"A potions identification spell," he judged. "On the smallest bottle."

"How curious," Professor Dumbledore pronounced. "It seems as though my Defence Professor sought to steal the Stone almost as soon as we left, but he was so very frustrated by the changes suggested by Mr. Thomas that he has imploded. That is a pity; I shall have to see who I can get to teach the class for the rest of the year."

"Do you think it was the Dark Lord?" Professor Snape asked.

"Most likely, though we cannot be certain," Professor Dumbledore replied.

"The Dark Lord?" Harry repeated. "Is that the same person as He Who Must Not Be Named?"

"It is indeed, Harry, it is indeed," Professor Dumbledore replied. "Though his true name is Voldemort."

Harry tilted his head.

"Professor Snape?" he asked. "Is that a normal sort of Wizard name? I'm not used to Wizard names very much yet."

"At least you recognize your limitations," Professor Snape replied. "But no, it is not normal. Usually one expects a surname."

"Well, his name at school was Tom Riddle," Dumbledore clarified. "But he changed his name to Voldemort, though most people don't care to know the first and they don't care to say the second."

* * *

Both Professor Snape and Professor Dumbledore kept poking their wands and casting spells on the robes for several minutes, before Professor Dumbledore stepped back.

"I believe we are now certain," he said. "Quirinus Quirrell was possessed by Tom Riddle. The two presumably met in Quirinus' sabbatical in Albania; it seems that Quirinus was running out of life, being drained slowly by his possessor, and that their attempt to gain the Stone came about in order to resolve that."

"A Stone, Professor?" Harry asked, who remembered that that had been mentioned before. "What stone? Just any stone?"

He looked back the way they'd come. "There's loads of them everywhere."

"Not any stone, no," Dumbledore said, as Professor Snape muttered something Harry didn't quite catch. "The _Philosopher's_ Stone. It is a creation by my good friend Nicholas Flamel, which can turn base metals into gold and create the Elixir of Life."

That sounded worth getting to Harry, though he had to ask what the Elixir of Life did. Apparently it would allow the drinker to live forever, and it was full enough of life force that it would restore Quirinus to health as well as allowing Tom Riddle to create himself a new body.

"So it's down here with the Mirror of Erised?" Harry asked. "Or is the stone hidden here and the Mirror in your office? I know Dean suggested that as well, but I didn't see it… is it in the back of the wardrobe?"

Professor Snape let out another heartfelt sigh, retrieving more potion vials from his robes, and Dumbledore chuckled. "No, Harry. For, you see, the Mirror was never down here to keep people from looking into it."

Confused, Harry downed the bottle of flame-freezing potion that Professor Snape gave him – this one to let him pass through the black flames – and followed the two teachers into the next room.

The golden-rimmed, claw-footed Mirror of Erised was still there, and Harry looked around in case there was something else in the room – but there was nothing but what had been there last time.

Professor Snape appeared to be mildly distracted by something in the Mirror for a moment, then shook his head, and Harry cleared his throat.

"Sir?" he asked. "_Is_ the Philosopher's Stone hidden here? Or is _that_ what you hid in your office instead?"

"It is indeed hidden here," Professor Dumbledore answered. "And now all I must do is to get it out of the Mirror, where I hid it."

He looked into it, smiling, then his smile turned into a frown.

"What a pity," he said. "I was sure that that would work. It will terribly disappoint Nicholas and Perenelle if I must tell them I have lost their stone."

"How did you hide it, Professor?" Harry said, looking into the mirror himself. It was a little different, this time, showing what Harry was sure was a part of Midkemia rolling by below the wings of the family of dragons, and he looked away quickly.

"I had intended that only someone who wanted to find the Philosopher's Stone but _not_ use it would be able to retrieve it," Dumbledore explained, his wand out. "Once such a person looked into the mirror, it would drop neatly into their pocket. I must admit I am disappointed, I had thought it one of my finer pieces of Charms work."

Harry had a sudden thought.

"I think I know what happened, Professor," he explained. "What would happen if someone who wanted a collection of valuable objects looked into the mirror?"

Professor Snape looked at Harry, then at the mirror, and back to Harry.

"This is another of those dragon things, isn't it, Mr. Potter?" he asked. "Like your remarkable resilience to spellfire, or your tendency to eat everything you can get your claws on? Are you telling me that you managed to get the Stone out of the mirror the moment you came in here?"

"I don't think so," Harry replied. "I, um… I think I got it out about three and a half months ago? It was really tasty, so I've been saving it for when I wanted to celebrate something."

The Potions teacher could only blink.

"Well, it seems it has been in someone's bedroom all this time!" Dumbledore chuckled. "Two points to Gryffindor for admirable self-restraint, I might say. And how do you know how it tastes?"

"I nibbled it a bit," Harry explained.

"Do we need to have that discussion about not consuming Potions ingredients again?" Professor Snape asked, his hand on his forehead. "And yes, Mr. Potter, I am fully aware that you did not know it was a Potions ingredient."

"Perhaps we should repair to Mr. Potter's bedroom," Dumbledore suggested. "There he can put away today's purchases, and we can also retrieve Nicholas' stone to return to him now the immediate danger has passed."

"Professor?" Harry asked. "I still have some questions about what happened. I thought that Tom Riddle died when he tried to kill me and it didn't happen."

"Indeed, in an ideal world that would be the case," Professor Dumbledore agreed. "But it seems that he survived, in some way which I do not yet understand."

He crouched down to give Harry's shoulder a squeeze. "And you can be sure, Harry, that I will be doing my best to ensure that he does not harm _any_ of my students… or former students."

Dumbledore paused. "Or friends, or acquaintances. Or even people I dislike, or have never had the pleasure of meeting."

"So, in short, the country," Professor Snape drawled.

"That sounds like a much simpler way of saying it, Severus," Dumbledore agreed. "Now, I believe the curtain of flames may be dispensed with..."

* * *

A few more questions came to Harry's mind as they progressed back through the challenges – the troll still floating in a state of befuddlement – and made their way up through the trapdoor into the main castle.

"Wouldn't it be possible that Mr. Riddle would still be able to get at the Philosopher's Stone?" he asked.

"Perhaps, perhaps," Dumbledore replied. "But I am sure that Nicholas has his own plans for how to conceal the Stone – he has had many months to come up with new ones."

"That's the other thing, though, Sir," Harry went on, as Dumbledore levitated Professor Snape up through the trap door. "Hasn't anyone ever tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone before?"

"Many have," the Professor agreed. "But Nicholas asked me to protect it, so I felt it best to lend my expertise. I am still rather proud of that enchantment to keep it in the mirror, even though as we have both discovered today it is a little less strict than I would like."

The Professor vanished with a sharp _crack_, and a moment later he waved from the top of the trapdoor. "Up here whenever you please, Harry."

* * *

"I remember reading something about how you couldn't do that sort of thing in Hogwarts, Sir," Harry said, as they reached the Fat Lady.

"That's correct, Harry," Dumbledore confirmed. "You cannot Apparate or Disapparate inside Hogwarts because of a pair of jinxes laid over the building and the grounds. Leo Major."

"I doubt I could stop you, Headmaster," the Fat Lady laughed, concealing her mouth with a fan, and swung aside.

"Albus, the boy has a point," Professor Snape said, when it became clear that Dumbledore wasn't going to elaborate.

"Oh, that's simple," the headmaster replied. "I'm the Headmaster. I'm the one who controls the jinxes, and I can exempt them wherever and whenever I feel like."

They were interrupted for a few moments as the Gryffindors who'd stayed at the school over the Easter Holidays noticed them, and Fred and George made a break for their room.

"Concealing contraband, no doubt," Professor Snape said laconically, as the sound of their footsteps faded. "They should count themselves lucky that is not what we're here for."

Percy got up as the closest Prefect. "Headmaster? Is something wrong? Shouldn't it be Professor McGonagall here, rather than Professor Snape?"

"No, not at all," Dumbledore assured him. "Professor McGonagall is far too busy with marking. Professor Snape and I are just getting something that Mr. Potter was so kind as to keep out of the way."

He snapped his fingers. "That reminds me, I should write Mr. Thomas a letter for all his help. Do you think I should send it by owl?"

"Maybe," Harry answered, as they reached the stairs. "I think it would be better to send him a letter by Muggle post, though… or you could tell him when he gets back to Hogwarts."

* * *

It was the work of only a few minutes to retrieve the somewhat nibbled Magnum Opus of Nicholas Flamel, and Dumbledore thanked Harry for all his help with such sincerity that he felt his cheeks heating up a little.

He'd been thinking a bit while he excavated the Philosopher's Stone from under his invisibility cloak, his pile of sweet wrappers (not quite as tasty as the sweets, but nobody else wanted them so he liked to collect them up) and his books, and as Professor Dumbledore pronounced the stone 'only slightly foxed and a little dragoned' Harry held up his paw.

"Professor?" he said, a little uncertainty. "Or, er, Professors? I've got some questions…"

"By all means, do ask them, Harry," Dumbledore advised him. "You should have no fear of asking a stupid question, unless you are already certain of both what the answer _is_ and what my answer _will be_."

Professor Snape looked like he was about to object, then stopped himself.

"Well… firstly, why didn't you hide the stone under the Fidelius Charm?" he asked. "You mentioned that earlier, a spell which keeps something secret, and I know you said you have to trust someone but if Mr. Flamel could trust _you_ then you could be the one who knows the secret."

Dumbledore stopped, and slowly raised his long index finger to his chin.

"What an excellent idea," he pronounced.

"Albus," Professor Snape began flatly. "I don't believe you could possibly have forgotten about the Fidelius Charm."

"My most sincere apologies, Severus," Dumbledore replied. "It seems my memory may be going in my old age. Why, some weeks I barely remember the names of all my students, such as Mr. Porter here."

He said it so matter-of-factly that Harry snorted with laughter, and Professor Snape let out a long sigh.

"I shall recommend it to Nicholas forthwith," the Headmaster promised. "And what was your other question, Harry?"

"It's about that spell from Diagon Alley," Harry explained.

"That, Harry, is the Patronus Charm," Dumbledore told him. "It is a very advanced piece of magic, and it is the finest example of a spell for Defence Against the Dark Arts that _cannot_ be a Dark Spell. Unfortunately, it is also one which in the normal course of your education you would not learn until after your Ordinary Wizarding Levels at least."

He winked. "I'm sure you'll have it done by Fourth Year. And before you ask, the Patronus is unique to the caster, and why it is that way is a personal matter. I'm afraid that Professor Snape would be quite within his rights to be offended if you asked why his Patronus was what it was."

"All right, Professor," Harry agreed. "Thank you – and thank you for your help today, as well."

"I think you will find, Mr. Potter, that it is you who have done me a great favour today," Professor Dumbledore replied. "Now, I fear I must find someone to take over the Defence job for the next term. It is such a shame when someone quits without giving me any notice of the job opening… perhaps that should be in the contract."

* * *

After they had left, Harry carefully put his new tent in the bottom of his trunk.

For now, all that it really meant was that he didn't have to worry about buying too many books.

Then, because it still wasn't all that late, he went to the Ravenclaw Library for an hour or so of light reading, before heading back to the Gryffindor Common Room to do some homework.

It may have been quite a big day, but homework was still homework.

* * *

"Blimey," Ron said, when Harry told him about what had happened. "That's… odd."

"I know," Harry agreed. "To think that, um… Tom Riddle got into Hogwarts."

"Who?" Ron blinked.

"Well, I could keep calling him You-Know-Who, but until today I _didn't_ Know Who," Harry pointed out. "The Dark Lord sounds kind of like I'm saying he _is_ one, and I don't think he's a Lord – I did find a list of Lords once but Riddle and Voldemort both weren't on there-"

Ron yelped. "Bloody hell, Harry, warn me before you say that!"

"-and that's why I don't want to use _that_ name," Harry continued. "Sorry."

His friend waved his hand. "It's okay. It was just kind of a shock."

Harry nodded. "And He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is really kind of clumsy. But Tom Riddle's his real name. I'm not sure if I should call him Tom or Riddle or both, though."

He frowned, lashing his tail. "Actually… now I said Dark Lord, and now I know he somehow didn't actually die, it reminds me a bit of Sauron. He could survive being killed – um, hold on, that doesn't sound like it makes sense. He could still be around after exploding because he has a ring he made, which he used to make him more powerful, but it meant that they had to destroy the ring to kill him."

"You've lost me, mate," Ron admitted. "Who's Sauron?"

Harry contemplated throwing one of his copies of _The Lord Of The Rings_ at Ron.

* * *

It was a few days later when a letter arrived from Mr. Lupin, telling Harry how very impressed he was with how Harry had done on Monday.

Apparently the way that Harry had stood in front of the Wizengamot and answered all their questions honestly and to the best of his ability, or possibly the way in which he'd been visibly offended by the idea of someone making a law that mentioned him specifically, had been 'very Marauder'. Harry wasn't sure what a Marauder was, and Ron didn't know either, but he assumed it had to be good.

Apart from that, Mr. Lupin asked some questions about how Harry was getting on with schoolwork (answer, quite well though he didn't think he'd be in the top few people in the class, because of Ravenclaws and Hermione) and what he thought he'd do for his O. (though Harry hadn't really come to a decision yet, because they didn't have to make their choice for at least a full year).

It was a nice letter to have, even without the knowledge that Mr. Lupin was sort of like an unofficial uncle with how he'd known Harry's parents, and Harry wondered whether he could visit Mr. Lupin some time during the holidays.

* * *

Most of the rest of the holiday was just taken up with Harry's by-now-normal schedule, featuring homework, book reading, and the occasional flight to Fort William or Portree to see if any new books had come in.

Harry had finally managed to sort out a library card, which gave his address at the same place the Pride of Portree's lead Beater used as his Muggle address – as a wizard married to a Muggle woman, it was something he needed – and so he could have built up his collection very quickly by just taking out the maximum number of books every weekend and copying the lot. But that didn't really seem right, to Harry, and so he restrained himself a bit and only duplicated the ones he thought it was almost certain he'd want to read more than once.

That still gave him a steadily expanding pile of books, and it was supplemented by buying newer books from the bookshops. One of them was a bit of a guess about whether he'd like it, and the first chapters weren't really to his taste, but once he reached the bit about the planet populated by wolf-like beings who were only able to think like Beings did in small groups – that hooked him, and he didn't stop until he'd read the whole of _A Fire Upon The Deep_.

He didn't really follow the chapters where everything was all sci-fi-ish – it was much harder to follow than anything Anne McCaffrey had written – but it had been quite a delight to read about Tines' World, and he wondered if maybe there could be a book that was entirely set there.

Though perhaps not, if only because Ron had been worried about him – he'd spent the entire day lying on his bed, missing at least two meals.

* * *

"Hey, um… Harry?" Ron said, as the holiday drew to a close. "You know our Defence Against the Dark Arts homework? Who are we going to hand that in to?"

Harry put his quill in the inkwell, not wanting to continue his Charms essay during the conversation, and frowned.

"I don't know," he admitted. "We can't hand them in to Professor Quirrell, because he's sort of not there any more. But Professor Dumbledore did say he'd be trying to get a teacher for Defence, so maybe we should hand them in to them?"

"I just hope the new DADA teacher doesn't say Quirrell was all wrong," Ron grumbled. "I'm having enough trouble learning this."

Harry snorted.

"No, it's not that," he said in apology, in case Ron was offended. "I know what you mean. It's just – I like 'Dada teacher'. It sounds like someone who teaches dancing."

"Oh, yeah, I get what you mean," Ron realized. "I'm going to be teaching you – Da da!"

That gave them both a good laugh, and Harry went back to the Charms essay. It was his last one for the holiday, and he was quite proud of how he'd spaced them out between his revision to make them easier.

* * *

That afternoon, Harry flew down to visit Hagrid. It felt sort of odd doing that by himself, but Ron was still only about halfway through his Defence notes to write out an essay, and Harry was uncomfortably aware he hadn't visited his big friend for at least a week.

To his surprise, Fluffy was sitting outside the hut with Hagrid, alongside a sleek grey wolf with brown socks and a white tailtip. They all looked up as Harry flew overhead, and Harry heard one of Fluffy's heads saying something about 'don't worry' before he was out of earshot.

Banking around to shed speed, Harry flared his wings and landed on all four paws not far from the hut.

"Harry, good to see yeh," Hagrid welcomed him with a broad smile.

"Yeah, sorry about how long it's been," Harry replied. "I'm surprised to see you out of the castle, Fluffy."

"Ah, of course, you wouldn't have known," Fluffy mused, two heads nodding while the third affected aloof disinterest.

"The Headmaster said we didn't need to protect the Stone an'y more," Hagrid jumped in. "But 'e said that Fluffy could stay on the grounds. We're usin' a blanket for now, Fluffy's happy enough outside, but for winter we'd better sort summat else out."

"Really, Rubeus, there's no need at all to go to the trouble," Fluffy's left head said with a carefully fang-hidden smile, and he prodded the big man with a paw hard enough to knock most people over. "I will be quite happy to camp out under the stars, I daresay the company makes it an improvement on the Forbidden Forest!"

The wolf whined, and Fluffy's middle head laughed.

"I'm sure my brother meant nothing by it," he said. "You and yours are, of course, delightful company – but you cannot deny your English is some of the best of the whole pack."

"Oh, you're one of those," Harry realized. "I'm sorry, but I don't know the name of your species."

"A species is your type of wolf, instead of the other type of wolf," Fluffy's middle head clarified. "Or close enough to be going on with."

"I am not sure," the wolf said then, and the voice was probably-female – Harry hadn't met any other wolves who could speak, but it sounded higher in pitch than Fluffy even after allowing for the difference in their sizes. There was a strange accent, as well, but it was easier to follow than someone like Professor Quirrell. "There is our name for us, but that is not a name that human people can, um… say?"

"Pronounce, I think," Fluffy's left head told her. "That's the word you're after."

"Pronounce, yes," the wolf agreed.

Harry smiled. "Oh, are you having English lessons? That's great!"

The wolfess dipped her head slightly. "Thank you."

Harry sat down, thinking about that.

"Do you have a name?" he asked, trying not to use words that were too complicated in case she hadn't learned them yet. "And I can try saying a few things that might work for a human way of saying your type of people."

"Have a name," she agreed. "Name is-"

She yipped.

Harry tilted his head, trying to work out how to spell that, and the wolf's tongue lolled out in a laugh.

"But can call me June Forrester," she added. "Is easier name to say for people who speak English."

* * *

June was quite pleasant to talk to, and said that she wanted to learn to read and write as well – something which Fluffy said would take a little more time, writing especially, but he was sure they'd work something out.

Harry did notice that there was a fire going in Hagrid's house as well, despite the fact they were all outside, but it didn't seem all that important – maybe it was for the benefit of Fang, the big Irish Wolfhound who was nowhere to be seen.

After a bit of thought, and some explanation of where the names came from, June rejected 'Tine' and 'Direwolf', but quite liked the sound of 'Warg' even after it was explained that their appearances in the _Lord of the Rings_ books were not complimentary.

"I can see what my family thinks of it," she decided.

"Actually, um… I did want to ask something," Harry added. "I've read some books which mention wolves – normal ones, though sometimes they're smart like your family is – and they say that wolves have alphas who are in charge. Is that right?"

June tilted her head.

"Yes," she said. "If by that you mean we have parents. But if not, no."

"Most people tend to at least start off with parents, or so I've heard," Fluffy's middle head contributed. "Meaning you no disrespect, of course, Harry."

"It's fine," Harry assured him, then looked back up at the castle. "I'd probably better go back and check on Ron's essay. He said he'd be done with it this afternoon, and that means we should have tomorrow free."

"Well, tell 'im from me that I hope you do well in your exams and suchlike," Hagrid told Harry.

The young Black-Backed Bookwyrm spread his wings and powered into the air, making the fur on the two canines ruffle, and circled once before heading for the Owlery.

It was nice to meet someone local.

* * *

When Hermione, Dean and Neville got back after the break, the first thing Dean did was to show them all the letter he'd got – one which thanked him officially for helping Mr. Nicholas Flamel with a matter of keeping hold of one of his prized possessions.

Apparently he'd been paid a few thousand pounds, too, though Harry wasn't really sure how Mr. Flamel had managed to pay lots of money to a Muggle family without it being suspicious – but, then again, Mr. Flamel was over six hundred years old, so he was probably really good with money or he wouldn't have any left.

That made perfect sense as far as Harry was concerned.

Once he'd given his version of events, though, and everyone had finished talking about Fast Food (which had taken up about half an hour, Harry and Dean and Hermione trying to explain to the two Wizard-raised boys about how useful it was to be able to buy food that had been cooked and neither Neville nor Ron – who had a House-Elf and a mother who was an excellent cook respectively – really getting it) then the topic turned to homework.

Ron was able to show off that he'd done all his essays in good time, Dean asked for a bit of help on his Potions essay – which turned out to be something Neville could help him with – and then they all did some practice with the spells they'd learned so far that year. Some of them needed something particular to work on, but for the ones which didn't it was good enough and Neville was relieved to get help on _that_.

"Oh!" Hermione realized, after they were done talking about that. "Hold on a moment, I've got something I brought back with me."

She vanished upstairs, and came back down a few minutes later with a newspaper article.

"So this looks like it might be real," she explained, putting it down. "It's from a few months ago. Ron, you remember what a pulsar is?"

"Um… hold on," Ron asked, frowning. "That's… that's one of those stars which kind of flashes very fast, right? But it's only with radio, or something."

"That's close enough," Hermione agreed. "Well, scientists seem to have found that one of them that's about, um… five hundred parsecs, I think that's about fifteen hundred light years away… has two planets around it."

Harry felt his own jaw drop, and pushed it shut again with a paw – and he wasn't the only one.

"That sounds really, really amazing," Dean said. "That's, like – that's got to be science fiction stuff, right? Sounds like Star Wars, or Star Trek or whatever."

"Oh, we've _got_ to show Ron one of those," Hermione agreed with her friend. "It's a shame we don't have a television here."

* * *

Classes started again the next day, and it was right back to the normal schedule – going to lessons, which now included a lot of revising, along with doing homework and everything else they were involved with. There was so much that Harry sort of wondered how it was that the teachers could manage to mark it all, and for that matter how it was that Percy Weasley wasn't going slightly mad with twelve O.W.L exams to study for and only twenty-four hours in a day.

Their Defence lessons had a surprise, though, which Harry supposed would have been even more of a surprise to anyone who hadn't heard about the sudden disappearance of Professor Quirrell – their class was run by someone called Sturgis Podmore, a tough-looking straw-haired wizard in his mid-thirties, who introduced himself as an Auror and who said that because Professor Quirrell had 'unexpectedly quit' (his words) he had been asked by his good friend the Headmaster to do their lessons for the next couple of months.

Ron barely held in a groan when Mr. Podmore – who insisted he wasn't a Professor – announced that he wouldn't be marking their essays from over the holidays, as he hadn't set them and wouldn't know what they'd been taught. But when he went on from that to start outlining exactly _how_ half-a-dozen minor jinxes could be used to protect yourself during a fight (even if your plan was to run away) everyone was soon a fan, and while it was fairly clear that Mr. Podmore wasn't really very good at _teaching_ it was certainly obvious that he was much better than Professor Quirrell had ever been… if only because he didn't stutter.

It looked like his plan was to go through the whole curriculum at breakneck speed, doing a year's worth of subject matter in two months, and Harry left the Defence classroom both headache-free and having thoroughly enjoyed himself for the first time since coming to Hogwarts.

Even if it did mean that they had yet more essays, with their first one being 'write down all the spells Professor Quirrell taught you and how he taught you to use them' – something which Harry thought would probably interfere with his plans to read a new book by the person behind the _Valdemar_ series.

It said that it had fast cars and elves in it, which was odd enough that he was quite eager to see where those bits all came from – but not eager enough to skimp on school work, since he knew he could always read it over the summer instead if he was busy until then.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Well, so much for that plot.


	17. A Dragon And A Different Dragon

"Hey, uh… mate?"

Harry looked up, swallowing down a bout of hysterical laughter he could feel bubbling up. He'd been reading about Arnold Rimmer's exam preparations in a book called _Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers_, and the description of just _how_ Rimmer got himself ready for the exams – which had involved spending five months drawing up a six-month colour-coded revision chart, panicking, spending more time drawing up a shorter colour-coded revision chart, more panicking, dubious maths, heavy doses of what he thought were amphetamines and finally what amounted to a fairly serious psychotic break where he wrote that he was a fish hundreds of times over on the exam paper.

He was thinking of showing this bit to Hermione – or perhaps Percy – but right now Dean was looking worried so he did his best to forget about what he'd been reading.

"What is it?" Harry asked Dean, though before he could reply Ron joined him in looking worried too.

"You might want to see this," he said. "It's down at Hagrid's hut."

"Right," Harry agreed, putting a bookmark in his book. "Let's go."

He paused for a moment at the window, then decided not to jump out – he'd probably have to wait until his friends arrived anyway.

* * *

When they got down to the hut, Hermione was already there and trying to remind Hagrid that he lived in a wooden house. June was outside, being walked through the alphabet by Fluffy by the looks of it, but Dean and Ron were so worried that Harry just waved a hello before heading into the hut and shutting the door.

"I swear it's hotter than it was ten minutes ago," Dean groaned.

Harry wondered what was going on, and why Hagrid was stoking the fire so high. So, naturally, he asked Hagrid, and his friend blushed. (Possibly. The heat had already left Hagrid quite ruddy, so it was a little hard to tell.)

"Well, um… see, after Fluffy and me talked about it, I worked out it was a mistake, an' all," the half-giant said. "But, well… I got drunk, a few weeks ago..."

Hagrid told them – or, at least, Harry, since it seemed like the others already knew – a story of how someone had approached him in one of the pubs in Hogsmeade, and offered him the chance of taking care of a dragon egg. Hagrid explained that he'd known that the egg wouldn't hatch into anything like Harry, because he knew Harry had used to be a human, but that having a dragon to raise had been his dream for decades.

He also mentioned how getting hold of the egg had involved a lot of gambling, some drinking, and how he'd accidentally let slip how to get past a Cerberus like Fluffy.

Harry absorbed all of that, thinking about how that meant that there was a dragon egg in the fire and that Hagrid was going to do his best to try and take care of it – in spite of how illegal it was.

However, there was something else he wanted to ask.

"So… this dragon dealer?" he asked, when Hagrid was done. "Did he have a stutter?"

"What?" Hagrid asked, visibly confused. "No, not at all. Why? That something I should expect?"

"Well, that might have been Quirrell," Harry explained. "Possessed by Riddle. But if he didn't have the stutter-"

"Well, come to think of it, he never used ter have the stutter," Hagrid mused. "Had it when 'e came back, though he was always a nervous sort…"

"Can we talk about the dragon?" Hermione asked. "Hagrid, this is such a bad idea on so many levels. You could get hurt, _Fang_ could get hurt, you could lose your house, and it's illegal as well!"

Harry nodded. "I think Hermione's right. This really isn't something you should keep secret."

Hagrid sighed, sounding dejected.

"What about if we let Professor Kettleburn or Professor Dumbledore know?" Harry suggested. "I'm sure that if there's a way to sort this out, they can handle it. Professor Dumbledore helped me just a few weeks ago."

"Reckon you're right," Hagrid agreed, and Hermione looked distinctly relieved that Harry had managed to convince their big friend.

"Maybe if you have to get rid of it then Charlie could help?" Ron suggested. "That way at least you'd know where to go to visit?"

That idea seemed to help, and they left a bit later with Hagrid having already written a letter to Dumbledore; Harry took it to the Owlery for him, and had Hedwig carry it to the Headmaster.

It was a bit of a complicated way to do things, but it did get the message to where it had to go.

* * *

The next few days were taken up with homework and classwork, as Mr. Podmore did his best to cram an entire year's Defence education into them in eight weeks despite being (as he himself put it) 'not actually very good at teaching', and much the same thing was going on in the other classes as well.

Professor Snape randomly asked questions in Potions, sometimes while they were in the middle of brewing another potion entirely, and took a point if the person in question didn't answer correctly and promptly or if they hesitated in their brewing; Professor McGonagall stressed how to tie up a Transfiguration spell so the result had no features of the original animal; Professor Flitwick started having them perform simple tasks like writing the heading for their notes with Charms instead of using their hands.

Professor Binns just kept going steadily through the curriculum, but then that was Professor Binns for you.

Harry also graduated to using one broom, and after so long working with the two brooms he'd had before, the switch to the single one was actually quite easy – much easier than he'd found it the first time around. Madam Hooch even told him that he'd probably be able to pass the broom proficiency test within the fortnight.

Then Hagrid asked them all down to his hut, and when they got there it was to find Professor Kettleburn already inside.

"Well done, all of you," were his first words. "You did the right thing to get Rubeus to report the egg, and you'll be pleased to know that Mr. Diggory from the Magical Creatures Department and Madam Bones from the Magical Law Enforcement department have officially assigned the egg to be seized as the proceeds of an illegal sale."

That made Harry frown, then look over at Hagrid – who certainly didn't look as sad as Harry thought he'd be if he'd lost the egg.

"...Sir?" he asked.

Kettleburn chuckled. "Well, of course they couldn't get _rid_ of it! Dragons aren't common, you know, and fortunately I happen to be one of the few people in the country qualified to actually hatch a dragon and see it through the first few months."

"An' I'm helpin' him!" Hagrid burst out, unable to contain his happiness any longer.

"There are going to be a few precautions, though," Professor Kettleburn added, looking over at the egg still resting in the fire. "For one, I'll be applying a flame-freezing charm weekly – adult dragons can't be affected by it, but my hope is that this will allow us to teach the hatchling about what you can or cannot breathe fire on."

As he went on, detailing the ways in which he was going to be taking great care over the hatched dragon, Harry sat back and started wondering just _how_ intelligent other dragons were.

He was obviously very much a different type of dragon, both with how he'd started out as human and how he was eleven years old and still not very big at all, but all other dragons grew up in the wild. Was it sort of like how fire lizards were instinctual, but if they bonded with a human and grew up with them they were brighter and more alert – like Zair? (Or Jhereg, which were more-or-less the same way.)

The idea of all dragons being _as smart as_ people was sort of scary, with how much wizards used their body parts for things, but maybe some dragons were – well – as smart as a dog? Or as smart as Hedwig? They wouldn't be the ones which showed up doing stupid things, so they'd be more likely to survive…

"But where are you going to _keep_ it?" Hermione was asking. "Dragons can fly, can't they?"

"We did think of that, Miss Granger," Professor Kettleburn chuckled. "You may be aware of a set of chambers deep inside the castle which are no longer needed for their original purpose. We thought it would work out quite nicely to keep the little Norwegian Ridgeback in there for a bit, until we're sure it will come back when we want."

Harry frowned, then raised a paw. "Professor? Would it help if I got some Muggle dog training books?"

* * *

The May Quibbler had its characteristically odd take on the changes at Hogwarts. Five different articles described Professor Quirrell as: undercover trying to investigate the Rotfang conspiracy; secretly an Albanian agent who Professor Babbling had defeated in a blistering duel over Liverpool; trying to blow up the Castle; having experimented with an anti-stutter treatment that had turned him into a Nargle; actually Mr. Podmore in a wig.

The fact they all had the same byline was a little confusing.

Apart from that, the Quibbler demanded that the Ministry tell everybody what the accredited institutions of O.W.L education were, whether the Minister was being bribed by a newt, and so on and so forth.

Harry had to wonder whether some of what was in the Quibbler was actually true, but he also had to wonder how anyone could possibly tell except those who knew about it anyway. Presumably Mr. Crouch knew why he was buying so many Invisibility Cloaks, and Mr. Weasley knew why he owned a battered old car despite the existence of the Floo, but none of their guesses about Professor Quirrell was remotely correct. (Admittedly Neville had shown him that the Daily Prophet described Professor Quirrell's departure as 'suddenly and unexpectedly called away to deal with a minor physical problem', which wasn't much better even if it was sort of technically accurate. If you squinted.)

* * *

The dragon egg hatched a day or two later, and Hagid named it 'Norbert' for about thirty seconds until Professor Kettleburn checked and informed him delicately that the dragon was in fact female. Her reaction to the inspection nearly got Kettleburn slashed in the arm, but he bopped her on the nose with his prosthetic left hand and firmly told her to 'stop'.

"You have to be firm, you see," he explained to Hagrid. "It's all about habits. You tell them off when they do something you don't want, and it's praise and rewards when they do. Sort of like awarding points, but because you're dealing with a dragon you need to be a bit more direct."

Hagrid nodded, absorbing that, then helped with feeding the little dragon.

"Now, don't forget," Professor Kettleburn added. "Her fire's going to come in in a month or two, so we'll want to move her to the corridor before then-"

"Norberta!" Hagrid said.

Harry wasn't the only one who gave Hagrid a look.

"What?" he asked, defensively, though he was blushing a little. (Or Harry thought he was blushing a little. It was hard to tell under the beard.) "I thought of a name and everything, but I was so eager that Harry might be getting a wee little brother I didn't stop to think if it might be a sister instead."

He scratched the dragon under her chin, which turned out to be something she liked quite a lot – an initial growl turning into a rumbling sound that was maybe a bit like a purr instead, and Hagrid kept up the scratches as Professor Kettleburn gently articulated her wings to check on them.

"They all seem healthy," he pronounced. "Remember, Rubeus, don't let her get away with misbehaving. We want to make sure she has the right behaviour."

"Right, right," Hagrid agreed readily. "'course."

* * *

Harry's main contribution to the hatching itself, apart from being there and possibly contributing to reassuring the hatchling a little, was to suggest 'Norberth' as a name. Hagrid didn't seem like he'd quite decided between the two just yet, though.

None of Harry's friends particularly wanted to help with the raising of Norberta or Norberth, but that didn't really surprise Harry when he thought about it. All four of them were much less able to shake off being bitten by a teething dragon, or scorched if her fire came in unexpectedly early (she was already shooting sparks when she sneezed) but it was interesting enough to Harry that he was quite willing to help out – it reminded him a bit of how it was to raise a newly-hatched dragon or fire-lizard on Pern, albeit with quite a lot less cooperation, and it wasn't a chance he was likely to have again for a while.

Professor Kettleburn said that there'd be some of his Care of Magical Creatures students helping out as well if Hagrid got overworked, which was nice.

* * *

With dragon-raising, revising and his book club, Harry found his free time reduced quite a lot as the days slipped by towards the exams – but that was okay, so he didn't really mind. It was the sort of thing he expected, and there'd be more free time after the exams (a few weeks at Hogwarts, then two months of holiday) so mostly he just got on with it.

There was an odd moment when Draco told him smugly that he knew about the dragon, before having to clarify that he meant the other dragon, and Harry agreed that, yes, the newly hatched dragon was quite a sight and did Draco want to meet her?

Then Draco had said that if Professor Dumbledore found out about the dragon there'd be trouble, and Harry had to respectfully disagree. For some reason Draco took the news that the hatchling dragon was entirely authorized quite badly, and he stormed off.

Harry blinked after the disappearing Slytherin, then shrugged. "What a strange person."

"I think he was trying to threaten you," Blaise helpfully supplied. "By the way, do you want an invite to my mum's wedding in August?"

"I don't really think I'll be able to make it," Harry replied. "My aunt and uncle probably wouldn't like it. Who's your mum marrying?"

"Oh, I don't know yet, but she just married _someone_ so there'll probably be another one by then," Blaise shrugged. "Possibly two."

"Your stepfathers really have dreadful luck," Harry commiserated, and Blaise snorted. "Maybe this one's going to be more lucky?"

"Maybe," Blaise agreed. "But… no."

Harry felt sort of bad about his friend being so fatalistic about the whole thing.

"Any idea what potion we're going to be getting?" Neville said, leafing back and forth through his slightly untidy Potions notes – Ron was off at Chess club, but he'd told them to go ahead and revise Potions anyway because that was what was on Hermione's chart.

"Why ever would we know?" Daphne said, raising an eyebrow. "We're in the same situation as you."

"But Snape likes Slytherins," Dean countered. "Isn't that right?"

"He's as impartial as anyone in this school," Daphne said haughtily. "We can't be blamed if we overhear something that gives us a clue, and we _certainly_ can't trust the clue."

"So there's not much point passing it on to you," Tracey concluded. "Anyway, Blaise, what are the ingredients of a forgetfulness potion again? I've forgotten."

Harry wasn't sure yet quite _how_ Slytherin that discussion had been, but he was sure it was fairly high up there.

* * *

As the weeks wore on, it seemed as though Harry's presence was sort of confusing to Norberth. He was a black dragon, like she was, but she was growing visibly from day to day – which meant that from her perspective he was shrinking, like everything else.

Of course, some Norwegian Ridgebacks _did_ stay the same size, but that size was much larger than Harry was, and this meant that whenever she looked at him it was for long, confused periods of observation as to why a dragon that was supposed to be bigger than her was now getting towards being smaller than her… or that was what Harry thought was going on, at least.

Then, about a week before the exams – and despite the demands of revision – Harry happened to be there when an important milestone was crossed. Norberth went momentarily cross-eyed, then exhaled a thin blast of flame that rolled over the bucket of rats she was busily eating her way through.

Thanks to Professor Kettleburn's flame-freezing charm, the jet didn't set fire to the contents of the bucket (or the floor) and Hagrid was terribly pleased by the result.

"Just look at that!" he said. "She's got her fire, yes she has!"

Norberth crooned a little as he scratched her under the chin, then blasted Hagrid in the face with the second jet of flames.

"Hey, now!" Hagrid rebuked her, giving her a light swat on the nose – enough that she noticed, at least. "None of that."

The dragon reared back a bit, then breathed flame on her lunch again. When that didn't earn a swat, she tried doing it to the rest of the floor (swat), then the table (swat), then Harry (which got two swats, even though Harry himself wasn't vulnerable to fire – another student would be, after all).

Then Norberth did her best to set the entirety of Hagrid's hut on fire, which didn't work but which did fill the room with smoke.

Hagrid clearly had some work to do with teaching her what could and what could not be breathed on, which was why Norberth (or Norberta, since nobody had quite decided _which_ name to use for her) would be spending much of the next few months indoors.

* * *

The exams came all at once, during the first real rush of summer heat. Everyone moaned about it a bit, though Harry was once more grateful for his unusual biology and didn't have much trouble with it.

All seven of the core subjects had at least one theory paper, an hour of answering questions or filling out charts to demonstrate how much they knew. Astronomy was mostly about identifying pretend starfields, as it was so bright in the evenings now that it wasn't really possible to get a proper night time, while Transfiguration involved things like Gamp's Laws and the Principles of Similarity. There were questions where Harry had to write down the right option from three or four, questions where it said most of a sentence and he had to fill in the important words, questions where they had to sort and join up a transfiguration chain with spells you knew (complete with the incantations) and questions where the paper asked why someone in a duel would cast a stunning spell or a tooth-growing hex.

A lot more of it was about simply remembering things, from the inventor of a spell and when they invented it (the _Lumos_ charm had come surprisingly late) to people who had said or done other important things – or what they'd done – and Harry found himself having to try hard not to get confused with all of his fantasy reading. It wouldn't do at all to say that one of the registered animagi was Belgarion, or that the one thing you couldn't do with magic was make something vanish, or even anything to do with wards.

By comparison, the practicals were sort of easy for the most part – or Harry thought so, at least. The potion was one he remembered (and it turned out that the Slytherins hadn't been trying to fake them out, though Harry had revised everything anyway) while the transfiguration spell was one that he got right and only Neville had any real trouble with out of their group.

Defence involved throwing different kinds of sparks, both forwards to dazzle an opponent and up into the air to ask for help, and Harry thought about showing off that he could cast that spell by breathing out sharply but decided not to (in case he accidentally set the examiner on fire).

The whole thing was very different from the SATs that Harry had done in primary school, and from the eleven-plus as well. There was a _bit_ of Maths in Astronomy, and obviously everything had to be written down so that was sort of like English, but there wasn't any separate Level 6 papers for harder questions.

It was even less like the eleven-plus, which was lots of short questions from easy to difficult where you were scored by how many you got right… and Harry suddenly wondered about something.

Hogwarts had been around for a thousand years. So what did exam papers look like back when it was first built?

That thought kept him stifling giggles through the otherwise quite dry history exam, as he imagined a paper with questions like 'History: There's Not Much Of It Yet' and 'Who Founded Hogwarts?' being set by Godric Gryffindor and the other Founders.

* * *

Then, finally – at long last – the exams were over.

Harry had a backlog of books most of two months long, Ron wanted them all to borrow school brooms and go flying, Neville was fretting about how well he'd done in Potions, and Dean was disappointed that they weren't able to have some kind of actual fight in the Defence practical.

Hermione's initial plans to ask about how everyone had done and to look up all the answers had been roundly rebuffed by all four of them, but Harry thought for a bit before deciding to try something else – finding Percy once he'd finished with his O.W.L exams and asking if he wanted to talk with Hermione about them.

The Prefect was quite tired, after twelve subjects and perhaps twenty exams in the space of little more than a week, but he was more than happy to talk to Hermione about it, and Harry left the two of them with a sense of a job well done.

Really, his first year of secondary school had been very pleasant all around – and with the exams over, it wasn't exactly going to get worse.

Though, admittedly, more than half of the Defence questions would have been very hard indeed if they'd been relying on just what Professor Quirrell had taught. It was a pity Mr. Podmore had already left, even if most of what he'd done was just do intensive practical lessons and get them to read the entire textbook front to back in two months.

* * *

Except for two things, it would have felt like the whole castle was breathing a relaxed sigh for the whole of the next two weeks.

The first of the two things was Norberta, who was still growing – though more slowly now, in that she wasn't doubling in length, she was still gaining weight and bulking out as well as developing her wings. Her flame breath was becoming something she could keep up for longer and shoot further, as well, and that meant keeping up her gradual exposure training to humans (teaching her that she wasn't allowed to bite them or set them on fire) as well as things like the Wargs and Centaurs of the Forbidden Forest (teaching her that she wasn't allowed to bite them or set them on fire) and Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes (teaching her that she physically _could not_ set him on fire).

Fortunately the need for lessons on what could be incinerated didn't extend to lessons on what Norberta needed to do to _fly_, which turned out to be largely instinctual. Harry himself got involved with those, following Norberta on her first flight and then on the following twice-daily flights as they grew in length and distance, and it seemed like the young dragoness was getting the idea that she was meant to not stray too far from Hogwarts.

It turned out that the dog training books helped out quite a lot for things like that.

Harry had honesty expected that once it became blatantly obvious that there was a dragon being raised at Hogwarts there would have been more of a reaction, but there really wasn't – so perhaps it was just that having a dragon in class and in book club and all the other things _Harry_ had been doing just made it a bit less exciting when there was also a dragon flying past half a mile or so away.

That was Harry's guess, anyway, but he wasn't a humanologist and the closest thing to that that Hogwarts offered was a third-year class in Muggle Studies.

* * *

The second thing was House competition, and six days after the end of the exams was the final Quidditch game of the year – this time Gryffindor playing Ravenclaw.

It was much better than the Hufflepuff game, for more than one reason. One was that it lasted about half an hour, which was a much better length than the three-hour slog that the previous Gryffindor game had been. It was also one where the Gryffindor Chaser team did considerably better than they had before, which was a sign of good training and that the team was finally starting to shake out. Ravenclaw had managed to rack up an early lead, and a large one, but the Gryffindor team hung on at about a seventy point deficit before slowly turning it around into a points credit. Ten points up, twenty points up… then just ten, then back to twenty…

It was much more enjoyable than any of the other games that year, and when it ended it was because the Ravenclaw captain made a decision to just have their Seeker catch the Snitch and take the win (by about fifty points) rather than aim to get points off Gryffindor to let them win the Quidditch Cup. That felt like a nice result, and though Oliver Wood was depressed that they hadn't turned it into a win everyone else was just glad that Gryffindor had made Ravenclaw work for their points.

That also meant that Hufflepuff won the Quidditch Cup, and had a narrow lead in the House Cup as well, with not much else that anyone could really do to catch up with them.

* * *

The last few days of the term were busy, for Harry – he made three trips to Fort William, filling out his collection with copied library books while he could still cast spells, and set up his tent to pile them into his library (along with most of his possessions, leaving only a set of robes and a few other things he'd need for the next day or so).

He finally managed to cast a spell besides the spark spells with his mouth, meaning that Bluebell Flames joined his repertoire of ways he could sort-of-breathe-fire without _actually_ breathing fire, and that led to a kind of water-gun fight except that everyone was using bluebell flames. It was enormous fun, like a snowball fight in the summer, and it left a big patch of the Hogwarts grounds looking like a forest fire until Hermione helpfully dispelled the lot.

In between those things, and taking part in the decision of what the book was going to be for the book club over the summer, Harry wrote most of a letter to Mr. Lupin.

The letter mentioned how Fred and George Weasley had tried to prank Norberth, and how the dragon had sort of snorted at them before just going back to sleep – which was an important milestone, Professor Kettleburn said, because it showed that the dragoness had learned who not to attack. (It also showed that Fred and George were terminally stupid, of course, but Professor Kettleburn said that that wasn't new at all.)

Harry also took care to make some book recommendations, labelling each one with what was good about them – like how _Dragonflight_ was the start of reading about a different and wonderful world, or how _Pawn of Prophecy_ was (as the name suggested) about a prophecy, but how the prophecy itself was a character who was a surprising amount of fun to be around.

He asked a few questions about his parents, things that hadn't occurred to him before now, and mentioned how he was thinking of trying out for Quidditch in second year. Apart from that, it was mostly just keeping in touch with the only person he knew who was about the right age to be friends with his parents (and Harry wondered if maybe they could meet up over the summer, but that was something he could work out in July or August).

The only thing that Harry didn't fill out was the bit about how many marks he'd got in his exams, because they didn't give those out until after the leaving feast.

* * *

When it came, the Leaving Feast deserved the capital letters. The food was excellent, everyone was enjoying one of their last meals at Hogwarts, and it was held with yellow and black on the walls and badger banners flying high – Hufflepuff happily celebrating their hard work and good luck in managing to eke out a win over Slytherin, thanks in no small part to their excellent Quidditch team.

Some of the Gryffindors were grumbling about bias, but Harry didn't think it was very serious. He was sure they'd all be celebrating if they'd won, after all, and Professor Sprout looked very happy indeed as she accepted the House Cup so he was happy for her and for her Badgers.

Harry made sure to eat until he was full, not because he expected to eat badly back home at Privet Weyr (or Privet Drive, as humans called it) but because it was just so tasty and he was going to be doing a lot of flying over the summer, and also took pains to get the addresses of all of his friends who lived remotely close to London. Dean and Hermione both lived actually _in_ London, albeit in the outskirts, so Harry thought he could actually fly there without too much trouble… but Ron was all the way over in Devon and Neville lived up in the Yorkshire Dales, both of them much too far to reach easily.

Professor Dumbledore also gave a speech, choosing to stand up to speak about halfway through pudding.

"Before you are all too busily occupied in digestion," he began, "I wished to announce to you all that Hogwarts now has a school mascot. We have not had one for a while, and I wished to correct this terrible oversight promptly as soon as I noticed it."

There were a few scattered chuckles, and the Headmaster continued. "Doubtless you have not yet seen our new mascot, but it is my pleasure to inform you that the Norwegian Ridgeback that you may catch the odd glimpse of is in fact our mascot, and that her name is either Norberta, Nora or Norberth depending on who it is who is informing me of that detail."

He smiled. "Fortunately, unlike the custom in some Muggle schools, I will not be asking one of you to take care of her over the summer. Thank you for your time."

With that, he sat down, and Harry shrugged before continuing to eat his pudding.

He had four forks and six spoons, this time, and he took care to eat every last one of them. He still wasn't sure if the kind of dragon he was needed to have some things like metal or glass as nutrients, but it probably wouldn't be polite to eat Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's cutlery.

* * *

Their marks arrived the following morning, during the last full day, and Harry wrote them into his letter to Mr. Lupin – quite proud of his overall high marks, though he hadn't done as well as Hermione and said so – before folding it into an envelope and flying up to hand it over to Hedwig.

"See if you can wait at his house for a day or so," Harry advised her, as he tied the letter to her leg. "I'll put the tent up once I'm home and set your cage up, and hopefully Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon will be all right with that."

They probably would, if only because Harry wasn't going to tell them anything about what he was doing except that he'd stay up in the loft, but that was probably the better option for everyone if you thought about it.

* * *

The next day, on the train, Dean looked at his wand.

"It's going to be so bizarre not being able to use this for two whole months," he said.

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "And I live in a magical household – Dad and Mum both use their wands all the time, and I don't know _what_ Fred and George do but they spend all their time in their room even normally."

He waved his hand. "Percy, well, Percy's going to follow the rules, and I'll do my best to do the same."

"Maybe you should put your wand somewhere you won't be tempted?" Harry suggested. "Under your bed or something?"

"Nah, then my sister would nick it," Ron replied.

"I'm kind of tempted to let my sister nick mine," Dean admitted. "At least at home. To see if all of us are magical or it's just me – it might help me work out who my father was, if it's just me."

"At least there's books, right?" Neville asked. "I started reading that _Diamond Throne_ one that Harry lent me, but it's kind of hard going – it'll be good to have ages to finish it."

"Yeah, magic in that one's kind of interesting," Harry agreed. "It sort of reminds me of our magic, with how if you pronounce it slightly wrong it can go _really_ wrong, but it's also sort of not? They don't need wands, anyway, but there's also this thing called the Bhelliom which has a completely different sort of magic, and… anyway, it'll be good when the next one comes out."

That was something else to look forward to, the books that would be released or that Harry could get hold of. It was still a pity he couldn't do magic over the summer, because otherwise he'd be able to magically grow his book collection to enormous size by copying books from all over London, but at least he had enough money to buy some more.

* * *

All in all, it was a highly optimistic Harry Potter who left Kings Cross after the train pulled in. He said goodbye to his friends, from his closest friends like Ron and Dean to his acquaintances like Blaise and Tracey all the way to people like Justin Finch-Fletchley who he'd only really talked to during lessons, then checked his packed-up tent was in his robes and took off to fly out of the trains' exit of Platform Nine And Three Quarters.

Throwing himself through a wingover, Harry was mildly surprised to discover that he'd actually flown out of the train exit of _Euston_ Station, then shrugged and flew home – which, after a fifteen mile flight, turned out to contain only Aunt Petunia and Cousin Dudley.

It seemed that Uncle Vernon had gone to Kings Cross to pick him up, which was really very nice of him and more than Harry had expected. He apologized sincerely to Aunt Petunia for the mix-up, then made his way up to the loft and set up his tent.

That evening, surrounded by books and with Hedwig flying in through the open loft window, Harry settled down for a good night's sleep.

Maybe he should make Uncle Vernon something nice to say thank-you and sorry about the confusion? Obviously he couldn't make anything magical, and Uncle Vernon wouldn't appreciate it anyway, but there were plenty of normal things Harry could do instead.

Or perhaps he should just buy something. Harry was slightly embarrassed to admit that he didn't actually know what Uncle Vernon liked, so he'd have to ask...

* * *

AN:

* * *

And that closes out First Year.

Dragon not yet properly named.


	18. Dragons Of Summer Holidays

According to the clock on the wall, it was about nine in the evening.

Harry flipped through his Transfiguration textbook, paused, flipped back a little, then looked from the paragraph to the essay he was writing.

It looked promising, so Harry rephrased it in his own words before writing it down – outlining how the _Reparifarge_ incantation would reverse a partial transfiguration by returning an object to its natural state, and specifically how that meant that an object that had already been transfigured could be reverted even if one did not know the original form. This was an exception to the rule of visualization, and a helpful counterpoint.

Harry's tail flicked from side to side behind his chair as he wrote, though he had to stop to erase a droplet of ink that fell on the table. It took three tries to rub it away, and Harry frowned at the result.

It was sort of good and bad, really. Bad because it meant that the ink-erasing charm he'd put on his quill at Hogwarts was starting to wear off, and it meant he really should have refreshed it before they got on the train.

Good, because this was one of his last few essays, so it vindicated his decision to do all his homework as soon as possible.

Hedwig hooted, and Harry put his quill down in the inkwell. "I'm in here, girl."

The tent flap blew open with a whoosh, and Hedwig slipped through the narrow gap before pulling up and flaring her wings to gently come to a halt – just on Harry's forearm, which he held out for her.

"Thanks," he told her, taking the letter from her leg, and she preened a little before flying over to her cage. The door was open, as it had been for most of the last month, and she settled in before tucking her head under her wing for a nap.

Harry opened the letter, which was from Hermione like he'd expected it to be. It said that visiting on Friday was fine, and that she was glad to help.

Harry put the letter to the side with a grin, and was about to go on writing when he remembered that it had been a while since dinner. So he got up, pushing the chair back, and walked around the table to the fridge.

Pouring some milk into a tin mug, he inhaled before carefully flaming it for about thirty seconds. The milk heated quickly, bubbling up to a boil, and Harry dashed some cocoa powder into it before giving it a stir.

It tasted just about right, and Harry drank half of it before sitting back down to continue with his essay.

* * *

Half an hour later it was done, and Harry blew over the parchment to dry it before rolling it up and putting it with the rest of his finished homework.

The clock said it was getting quite close to ten, so Harry washed out the mug he'd used and gave it a quick scrub. Putting it aside to drain, he turned off the light in the kitchen and made his way through into the library.

The sight of it still made him smile, even after a month of living in Privet Weyr. All the shelves along the walls had books – there weren't enough to more than half-fill them, but they were certainly there – and other books along with most of his other possessions lay in a pile on the floor, covered over with a heap of dozens of still-present Hogwarts letters.

Harry used his tail to flick the light on, then thought better of it. Turning the big main light off again, he instead turned on a small bedside lamp he'd moved from one of the bedrooms and which rested next to his bookmarked copy of _The Phoenix Guards_.

Another few chapters before bed sounded nice, and Harry rolled over onto his back to hold the book over his head. It was sort of a confusing one, with Dragons being a type of elf (only they weren't called elves, they were called Dragaerans) and also a thing that sounded a lot more like the sort of dragon Harry thought of when he thought of dragons, while Jheregs were criminals and also miniature dragons that couldn't breathe fire. And that wasn't even getting into what Issola were – Harry thought maybe they were herons?

Still, it was a fun read, and just the thing after a hard day's cooking, cleaning, eating Dudley's broken toys (he'd got presents for his birthday a week or so ago, and many of them were already broken) and doing essays.

* * *

The next day, Harry's alarm clock woke him at about half past six in the morning.

He rolled off his sleeping pile and stretched, wings going up and out as he flexed all his claws and muscles at once, then checked his calendar.

He had two more essays to do, which were going to be done tomorrow, but today was a day he was going to be going to Diagon Alley to meet up with Mr. Lupin and do some shopping. They were planning to meet for lunch, and Harry's rough plan was to be back to Privet Drive by about three in the afternoon, so he felt he had easily enough time to do the cooking like he'd told Aunt Petunia he'd do. (He was thinking of doing a risotto, and it had been difficult but he'd persuaded Aunt Petunia to get the ingredients.)

After a quick breakfast (two slices of toast, one lightly heated and one carbonized) Harry cleaned his teeth and then went into one of the bedrooms of his tent. He didn't use it, because of the risk to the sheets, but it did hold his clothes – which mostly consisted of his Hogwarts robes and cloak, admittedly, and Harry carefully put one of his sets of robes on – mostly for the pockets – before going down a quick mental checklist.

His money bag… wand… backpack to carry the things he was going to buy…

That looked like everything, so Harry went into his kitchen and sat down at the table to read for a while.

There wasn't really any point leaving before eight in the morning, after all. Flying to Diagon Alley didn't take all that long.

* * *

Harry left a locked tent behind him and his heavy trunk on top of the way into the loft, took off into light drizzle, and flew for about half an hour through low cloud to reach the Leaky Cauldron about nine in the morning.

Several people looked up as Harry walked through the streets, but Harry was quite pleased to see that he didn't get anything like as much attention as he had last year. How much of that was the months of time to get used to the idea and how much was just that he'd been visiting for the past few weeks was something Harry couldn't really answer.

His wings were aching a little, not in warning but just letting him know he'd given them a good workout, so he rested them a bit as he picked up some money for shopping – both in the mundane and wizarding worlds.

That done, he went into the largest Quidditch shop to have a look. There were some very costly and flashy brooms in the window, things like the Nimbus Two Thousand And One, but that didn't interest Harry all that much the way he was feeling now. It was too much money on one broom, and he much preferred the idea of being able to _share_ the feeling of flying. Whether it was just around the expansive grounds of Hogwarts or maybe going for a flight during the holidays, it felt like a nice idea – and he was, apparently, the most well-off of his friends (aside from maybe Neville, who he knew had quite a big house but none of the details) so he could maybe do something like that.

It was worth thinking about, but Harry didn't come to a conclusion. Maybe he'd have a better idea after he was sure whether or not he was going to be having a growth spurt? But that would be a reason to put it off forever, so perhaps not.

* * *

Harry had a bit of a poke around in some of the other buildings in Diagon Alley as well, along with the side streets (though he stayed away from Knockturn Alley, which was clearly a rather unpleasant place). The Museum of Muggle Curiosities was quite funny, if only to see someone with a magic wand explaining in hushed tones about the amazing powers of a microwave, and Harry actually decided to get something in the entirely mirror-themed shop called Janus Galloglass (though neither the shop owner nor the person at the desk actually had either name, since it had been founded some decades before).

He wasn't quite sure _what_ he was going to do with a pair of enchanted mirrors that let you talk to the person who had the other end, but there'd probably be something.

It was when he was looking into the window of a shop that sold plants, picking something out for Neville, that Mr. Lupin called his name. "Harry!"

"Oh, hello!" Harry replied, turning around carefully so he didn't knock over any of the plants. "I think we're a bit early?"

"I had some books to get," Mr. Lupin explained. "It's good to see you, Harry."

"Then let's go to the bookshop," Harry invited, not seeing a problem there at all. "I do need to get something from here, first… it's for Neville."

Mr. Lupin smiled, accepting that, and began asking Harry about how his summer was going as they went inside.

* * *

"You're a bit different from your father," Mr. Lupin said, some time later, as they ate seafood from a shop called Brews and Stews – Harry hadn't eaten there before, and had decided it was his treat. "It might just be how I remember it, but your father was a lot more… boisterous."

"He was?" Harry asked, interested. "I don't really know… you mentioned how you were in a group called the Marauders."

"Yes, we enjoyed playing pranks," Remus agreed, then frowned slightly. "Though sometimes they went too far."

Harry nodded an understanding of that. "All right… maybe I should tell my friends Fred and George about that, and not to go too far. They play pranks a lot, like I said in that letter."

"Yes, and so long as they can avoid the temptation to prank something that might hurt them they'll probably do quite well," Mr. Lupin mused. "I always found that that sort of thing inspired us."

He paused, looking both ways, then ate some of his prawns. Harry was abruptly reminded of his own meal, and they ate for a few minutes in silence.

There was quite a stir some way up the Alley as a sphinx came through, making her way to the bookshop, and Harry smiled – remembering when that had been him.

It looked a lot like that was Professor Flitwick with her. Maybe he didn't have much else to do when it wasn't term time at Hogwarts?

Shrugging it off, Harry turned his attention back to Mr. Lupin. "What kinds of things?"

"Well…" Mr. Lupin said, looking around, then bent down to Harry. "I'm afraid some of the things we did weren't exactly _legal_, Harry. Obviously James and Peter are dead, and Sirius is in Azkaban and never getting out, but I'd like to ask you to keep it private because some of it reflects on me."

Harry had to think about that.

"The only time I'd tell someone about it is if it would be more dangerous to keep it secret," he decided. "Is that okay?"

"All right, Harry," Mr. Lupin agreed, bending a little closer. "You see, we were all Animagi. James was a stag, Peter was a rat, and Sirius is a dog."

Harry snorted.

"Like the Dog Star," he said. "But, wow – I read about the Animagus potion once. It's really hard to brew and you have to hold a leaf in your mouth for months, I'm really impressed."

He tilted his head. "What are you, then?"

"Well… I'm something else," Mr. Lupin replied. "I'd rather not say, sorry."

Harry accepted that, and frowned for a moment.

"What about my mother?" he asked. "What was she?"

"She wasn't one of the Marauders," Mr. Lupin told him. "She actually didn't like your father for most of their time at school, but eventually – well, James said that he'd won her over, but I always thought it was more like his affections _delayed_ her deciding she liked him."

Harry had to admit that relationships always seemed very complicated, especially in books.

"So… what's second year like?" he asked.

"Well… you do get into more complicated magic," Mr. Lupin replied. "There's some things you go back over from first year, but the plants you work with get more complicated and so do the spells. I think you cover a lot of the material around the Statute of Secrecy then as well."

"That's always confused me a bit," Harry admitted. "But I don't really have secrecy trouble, so maybe I can't relate properly."

He shrugged, finishing off the last of his seafood with a bannock that he used as a wiper. "What about astronomy?"

"I… think you do the rocky planets and the asteroids, mostly," Remus said. "Sorry, it was a long time ago, and I never liked astronomy very much."

* * *

After lunch, they spent another couple of hours talking – mostly about Harry and his childhood, this time, along with at least half an hour just talking about books.

Harry mentioned how he was a bit worried that he didn't know what the second-year course books were yet, and Mr. Lupin told him that there would be a letter some time in early August. Apparently it was hard to tell before then because they needed to have all the teachers assign their course books, and the Defence teacher was always a bit of a wild card.

Then Mr. Lupin told Harry about a wizarding book on the first wizard to ride a dragon. Harry was sort of interested, though he wondered how that could work, and the fact that the book was called _The Short And Glorious Life Of Borin The Foolish_ suggested that maybe it hadn't worked very well.

It was a very nice experience, all around, being able to talk to an adult who understood some of Harry's life, and it was a bit of a shame that Harry couldn't invite him around. Mr. Lupin seemed to understand the Muggle world quite well for a Wizard, but he doubted that Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia would appreciate a visit from anyone magical if they could possibly avoid it.

They _might_ have considered Hermione okay, because her parents were dentists, but Dean… Harry had the feeling that it would be "probably not".

* * *

Making it home at about half past three, Harry did a few chores outside (which gave him quite a nice snack, as there were dandelions to be removed from the front lawn) and then got to work on dinner. The risotto was a mix of leek, bacon, peas and the risotto rice itself, and it was cooked for long enough that the sauce had a slightly tacky consistency, and while Uncle Vernon grumbled Harry was sure he was onto a winner (if only because Dudley ate all the leftovers).

Feeling pleased with how the day had gone, Harry carefully wrote out a note and wrapped the glory-of-the-snow plant he'd got in a box. Some wrapping paper went on the box, and he added an envelope addressed to Neville before putting the whole thing in brown paper.

"Can you take this to Neville's grandmother?" he asked Hedwig. "I know it's a long way."

Hedwig nibbled his talon, clicked her beak twice, and set off with the whole thing out the window.

Harry smiled after her, glad that he had such a matter-of-fact pet (or was it companion? He'd certainly have been impressed by a fire-lizard as bright as Hedwig) then crawled through his tent flap and got back to the book he'd been reading earlier.

* * *

By contrast with the Tuesday, Wednesday was a stay-at-home sort of day. The showers that had characterized Tuesday had turned into a deluge of heavy rain, and Harry felt no compunction at all about retreating into his weyr and trying his paw at sketching.

He'd never be as good as Dean, but it was a nice little thing to try out, and it would probably come in handy for Herbology – as well as Runes, probably, if he decided on doing that subject, and even Astronomy could benefit.

Hedwig got back halfway through the afternoon, and Harry helped her dry off before sketching her as she dozed in front of the stove. He thought it looked quite good, though Hedwig took one look and cuffed him with her wing hard enough to knock his glasses to the floor.

Harry also got his last remaining homework essays done, which was something he considered quite an achievement – it was only halfway through the holidays – and celebrated with a chocolate frog. He got a card for Newton Scamander, putting it with the rest, and wondered in a sort of idle way whether chocolate frog card people would talk to one another.

* * *

Thursday was a day Harry had been looking forward to for weeks, and it dawned bright and clear. He took off not long after breakfast, flying to London, and referred to a battered old A-Z to find where he was aiming for – a nice big bookshop in Picadilly, six floors high.

Harry had a fairly substantial budget with him, and he spent hours walking up and down looking through all the new books he could pick. It was terribly hard to choose, and a particularly dragonish part of Harry's mind wondered if he could just kick everyone else out and live here now, but that was a nasty thought so he ignored it – instead making a mental shortlist of the books he actually wanted to buy.

In the end, he went with quite a wide selection. There was a beautifully-illustrated book about dinosaurs and humans living together, called _Dinotopia_, and then there was a big omnibus book about the deeds of someone called Paksenarrion (presumably, anyway), along with a science fiction book about someone called Cordelia.

Then there was a new Redwall book, _Salamandastron_, which were always exciting even if it did seem like far too few of the rats were actually nice people – but then, far too few of the Goths in the books about Rome were nice people, so perhaps it was the same sort of thing.

He decided to try the _Animals of Farthing Wood_ series as well, wondering if maybe he should show them to June next time he was up at Hogwarts, and finished off his purchases with a book magazine (for more inspiration) and a big three-volume set of the first three books in the _Dragonlance_ series.

They filled his backpack, but Harry didn't mind in the least – nor did he mind the slightly difficult flight home, even after he'd stopped off halfway to have a rest and buy some lunch from what he privately referred to as 'a Scottish chef'.

* * *

That afternoon, over dinner, Uncle Vernon reminded them all of how he had an important after-dinner meeting at home on the coming Friday.

"Uncle?" Harry asked. "Would it help if I wasn't here for the day?"

"What?" Uncle Vernon said, blinking. "Yes, I suppose it would. They don't know about you. I'd have said you should make no noise upstairs and pretend you weren't here."

"All right," Harry replied, glad to have helped. "I'll go over to a friend's house."

Really, that had made it all much easier to sort out. All he really had to do now was to make sure he had Hermione's address right, and fly over there on Friday morning before coming back on Saturday.

* * *

In case it was needed, Harry took his tent with him. He sent Hedwig to Hermione and followed her, the snowy owl staying close enough that Harry could keep her in sight, and they flew over the Thames a lot further upriver than Harry would have normally gone. There were several large parks on the way, some of them with lakes and gardens and all of them full of families, and Harry smiled a little before coming down to land on a leafy street with quite large houses and gardens both front and back.

Hedwig flew into the window of one of the houses, and Hermione waved out not long after. Harry waved back, and his friend vanished into her house.

The door opened about a minute later, and Harry made his way inside.

* * *

The Grangers were quite a nice family, and apparently they'd coordinated their time off work so they could both be at home during much of the time Hermione was home from Hogwarts. They seemed to be still a little overwhelmed by how Hermione had turned out to be a witch, and that they now had a wizard visiting, so Harry made sure he was all smiles and shook their hands one by one.

Hermione said that she wanted to show Harry a film or two for his birthday, which sounded nice to Harry (who was quite happy that she'd remembered that it _was_ his birthday), but before they did Mr. Granger cleared his throat to ask something.

"Ah… Hermione?" he began. "Which of your friends is this?"

"This is _Harry_, Dad," Hermione replied. "You know. The dragon."

"Oh, so this one's the one who's a dragon?" Mr. Granger asked. He looked at Harry, and frowned. "I'm… well, you said that people who didn't have magic couldn't see that he was a dragon, and I certainly can't."

"You can't?" Harry repeated, intrigued, and spread his wing. "What does it look like I'm doing now?"

"Reaching out your arm, of course," Mr. Granger replied.

"What?" Hermione said. "Dad, that's his wing."

Harry experimented by putting both wings out, standing on his hind legs, and shaking Mr. Granger's hand. The man's eyes watered, and he put his free hand to his temple.

"That's very strange," he said, as Harry furled his wings again. "For a moment it looked like you had your arms out, then suddenly it looked like you had one arm out and were shaking my hand with the other one..."

"That must be some very impressive magic," Hermione decided. "It's a pity you can't really see Harry, though, and that I can't show any of you any magic because there's a law against it. All I've managed is to show off those ink-erasing quills and some magically moving pictures."

"Actually, I do have an idea about that," Harry said, reaching for his backpack. "Do you have a large room I can set something up?"

* * *

Harry was very proud indeed of how Mr. and Mrs. Granger reacted to his tent, and his invisibility cloak went down nicely as well – that was something _they_ could try out, vanishing completely while it was on and until they took it off again.

"So, what do you use this for?" Mrs. Granger asked. "I hope it's nothing naughty."

"I don't really use it at all, actually," Harry told her. "I'm sure there'll be _something_, but right now it's just nice to have because it belonged to my dad."

After that, though, Hermione had to insist that they watch a film, and so Harry squeezed into a comfortable spot in the living room as they watched _Star Wars_.

It was amazing. Dramatic and funny by turns, with some things that made Harry sure they must have been doing magic at _some_ point, and with a tense climax that left Harry nervously holding his breath until the final explosion.

Hermione seemed _very_ pleased with his reaction.

* * *

After that they had lunch, which was pleasant – Harry enjoyed being able to talk about Hogwarts, and it seemed like Hermione enjoyed being able to have someone with her who'd been in the same classes and involved in many of the same events. They had French bread, with ham and cheese, and Mr. Granger cried out in surprise when Harry ate the bag until Hermione reassured him that Harry did that sort of thing all the time. Harry proceeded to demonstrate by asking for something hard they were throwing out (it was an old spoon where the metal bit was coming out of the handle) and biting it cleanly in half, chewing it and then swallowing it down.

"That… goodness," Mrs. Granger said, staring. "That would be a lot easier to swallow-"

She stopped, chuckling at her own mistake, then continued. "I mean, that would be a lot easier to _accept_ if we could see that you were a dragon, Harry. As it is, we know from those sketches Hermione's friend did what you _look_ like, but as far as we're concerned we just saw a human boy bite the head off a spoon and eat it."

Hermione tried her hardest not to giggle.

"Well, that being said," Mr. Granger added. "Do you two want to go out and do anything?"

"I want to show him the next Star Wars film," Hermione told her parents. "I think he'd enjoy that one a lot as well."

Harry wasn't really sure what to make of the way that Mr. and Mrs. Granger smiled, but he gathered that he'd probably enjoy the film.

* * *

"I wonder if this Darth Vader is like He Who Must Not Be Named," he mused, after the bit with the big walking machines when they'd moved on to the bit that was in space.

Hermione stopped the video, and looked over at him. "Why?"

"Well, he's called a lord, like the Dark Lord bit," Harry explained. "And everyone calls him Vader or Darth Vader, but that sounds like a silly name – well, a bit silly," he amended, thinking about people like Luke Skywalker, Biggs, Leia Organa, General Veers and Admiral Piett. "So maybe that's a name he picked for himself, like Voldemort is, and his real name's one he's ashamed of, like Tom Riddle is."

Hermione found that very funny, for a reason Harry didn't understand, but before they could continue watching _The Empire Strikes Back_ there was a sudden _pop!_ as a little House-Elf in an old pillowcase appeared.

The House-Elf took one look at Harry and bowed, and then Hermione cleared her throat.

"Excuse me?" she asked, sounding annoyed at first, but her tone quickly changed to shocked. "Um… are you all right? You don't look very well."

"Harry Potter!" the House-Elf said, then jumped. "And – who is this?"

"I'm Hermione Granger," Hermione replied. "And this is my house..."

"What's going on?" Mrs. Granger asked, poking her head around the door. "Oh! Goodness, Hermione, you didn't tell me we were having another visitor."

"I wasn't expecting us to have another visitor," Hermione said. "He just appeared in the living room."

"Well, hold on a few minutes and I'll get the biscuits," Mrs. Granger said. "What's his name?"

"We don't know that yet," Harry volunteered. "What _is_ your name?"

"Dobby, sir," the Elf told him. "Just Dobby."

"And do you like tea, Mr. Dobby?" Mrs. Granger asked, and got a hesitant shake of the head. "I'll make some Ribena then."

* * *

A few minutes later, they were all seated at the kitchen table – Dobby, Harry and Hermione, while Mrs. Granger put out some plates of biscuits. Dobby seemed terribly amazed at being served food by a human, and Hermione had to explain what she knew about House-Elves.

They were (as she put it) magical beings that could cast quite powerful magic without a wand, but who were thoroughly used to the idea of being servants. She also said that they were usually treated quite well, though Dobby didn't look like he'd been treated very well.

Everyone was quite alarmed when Dobby agreed with her, and then started hitting his head against the table while saying that he was a 'Bad Dobby'.

"Hey!" Harry yelped. "Why are you doing that?"

"Dobby must!" Dobby replied. "Dobby must punish himself if Dobby speaks ill of his family, sir!"

"That's terrible!" Mrs. Granger said, though Harry thought just the same thing and he was sure Hermione did as well.

Dobby looked torn between agreeing and not wanting to hit his head against the table again, so Harry decided to try changing the subject.

"Um… Dobby?" he began. "Why are you here? You seemed surprised to see Hermione, but this _is_ her house – not mine."

Dobby's eyes went wide, and he mumbled something about how Harry Potter was very intelligent. Harry wasn't at all sure about that, because it seemed quite an obvious question, then went into a little detail.

Apparently – and Dobby didn't explain it very well, so Harry wasn't sure – there was a plot to hurt him at Hogwarts, so it was very important that he didn't go back to Hogwarts. It was something to do with a wizard, but whenever they tried to ask a question that got any more information Dobby had to start hitting himself or banging his head on the table.

Mrs. Granger was looking increasingly worried by it all, taking charge and asking why Dobby had to hurt himself (Dobby didn't seem to understand the question as such) and who his family was (more head bashing on the table) when Dobby mentioned about how he'd hoped that keeping Harry's letters from his friends from him would make it so he wouldn't want to go back to Hogwarts.

That made Harry scowl, feeling unaccountably angry – the idea that someone was keeping _his things_ from him wasn't nice at all, and he had to hastily restrain a growl.

"But that's silly," Hermione said, blankly. "If Harry wasn't getting any post from us then he'd just want to come to Hogwarts anyway to _ask_ us, even if he didn't just fly over."

"Hold on," Harry added. "I thought I _was_ getting letters."

"Oh, Dobby did not want to stop Harry Potter's owl, sir," Dobby explained, looking nervous. "Dobby could not anyway, Harry Potter's owl is very hard to catch! But there were other letters that Dobby stopped!"

He produced a sheaf of them, and this time Harry did growl slightly.

There was a flash, and everyone looked over in surprise to see Mr. Granger with a camera.

"I had to get a new roll of film," he explained, taking another picture. "I already wanted to see if we could see Harry's dragon-ness on film, but now I've got a photo of Mr. Dobby as well."

"Dobby is not a mister, sir," Dobby replied matter-of-factly. "Dobby is a house elf, but Dobby is just Dobby."

He brightened. "But Dobby has an idea! If Harry Potter is caught doing magic outside school, then Harry Potter _cannot_ go back to Hogwarts!"

"That's awful!" Hermione said.

"And it probably won't work – especially now he's mentioned it," Mrs. Granger added.

Dobby looked so suddenly lost that Harry sort of felt sorry for him, even though he'd stolen some of Harry's things.

"Stopping my post isn't going to help," he said, then. "Look, I'll keep my eye out for whatever it is, but I'm kind of hard to hurt. If I'm careful, it should be really hard for whoever this wizard is to stop me."

* * *

Harry's reassurance did seem to help a little, but it took at least another half an hour before Dobby left. He kept trying to impress on Harry how terribly dangerous it was to go to Hogwarts, and Harry replied that it hadn't been very dangerous so far and he'd only got a few bruises.

At the same time, Mr. and Mrs. Granger exchanged several glances as they asked Dobby about what work he normally did, and how he had to 'punish' himself, and Hermione actually went to get some paper before coming back and taking notes.

When the House-Elf finally left, it was without Harry's post, and he sighed in relief.

"Thank you," he said, pulling the pile over to himself. "All of you. I… really don't think that would have gone well if it was at my Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's house."

He frowned. "But… he said he might fake it being me who'd done magic, and that might get me in trouble. What should I do?"

"So long as you have some responsible adults able to vouch for you, that _should_ be all right," Mr. Granger said, examining the quick-developing Polaroid he'd taken later on in the discussion. It showed Harry as a dragon, to Harry, but when he asked Mr. Granger said that Harry still looked like a boy to him.

It was clearly very impressive magic.

"I'm not sure my Uncle would," Harry admitted. "My Aunt could do, but I'm not sure, and Uncle Vernon especially doesn't like magic at all."

"Maybe you could ask Neville if you can stay with him?" Hermione suggested. "That's a magical household, and I bet he'd be glad of the company – I think something happened to his parents, but when I asked he got all quiet so I didn't keep asking."

She made a bridge of her hands. "And I think I need to do some research on how you're allowed to treat House-Elves. If you treated a human the way his family treated Dobby I don't think it would be legal."

"I think you're right, dear," Mrs. Granger agreed. "You should be careful about it, but definitely don't forget about it."

She turned her attention to Harry. "I'm sorry about all this, Harry. Nobody deserves this kind of thing on their birthday."

Harry smiled, still pleased by the reminder that it was his birthday and he was able to celebrate it, then looked at all the letters that Dobby had left.

Some of them looked suspiciously package-shaped.

"I… think I've got presents," he said.

"That sounds like a good opportunity to open some presents," Mr. Granger said. "Hermione?"

"Right!" Hermione agreed, turning to go upstairs.

* * *

Harry's birthday had presents. Which was nice.

There was a month's worth of letters, which seemed to be from whenever anyone had tried to send him a letter that _didn't_ go via Hedwig, and those included packages from Ron, Dean, Neville and Hagrid, as well as from Mr. Lupin.

Ron had sent him a pile of old electronics, saying that he was sorry it wasn't anything more impressive but that his dad had loads of them in the shed. None of them really looked fixable, and some of them Harry didn't even know what they were (as such), but they did look tasty so Harry decided to treat it as being given some sweets for his birthday.

Dean's gift, meanwhile, had been a book – specifically a big collection of myths, fables and legends, including just about every Muggle legend about dragons and from all over the world. It was quite big and full of small type, and that was just the kind of book Harry liked (because it meant there was more of it) so he was really very pleased with that as well.

The package from Neville turned out to be slightly different. It was a book as well, but very much a _magical_ book – it was about a period of late Roman history, but from the magical point of view.

It sounded very interesting, to Harry, and when he asked Hermione if he could borrow the book he got her for Christmas to get the Muggle perspective she admitted that she'd already wanted to ask him the same question in reverse.

Hermione next gave Harry her own present, a set of three books called a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide and a Monstrous Compendium. Harry wasn't sure at all what they were, at first, and when he opened one he found that it wasn't about actually running a dungeon at all so much as designing one.

"They're for a game," Hermione explained, seeing Harry's quizzical look. "I thought it was the sort of thing you'd be interested in… the game has dragons in the title, anyway. And you get enough books that it's a bit hard to surprise you with a new fiction book."

Harry had to admit that that was fair. He wasn't sure if he'd actually _play_ the game, but some of what was in there sounded interesting anyway.

Hagrid got him a big bar of chocolate, which was apparently magical, and Harry wondered just how magical it was – if it was like a chocolate frog, it would try to escape, so he decided to save it for now. And finally there was what Mr. Lupin got him, which was a dressing gown that had some holes in it for his wings.

It was a nice touch, and Harry felt really quite happy about his presents.

* * *

The next thing they did was that Harry sent that letter to Neville, and then Hermione reminded them that they had the rest of _The Empire Strikes Back _to watch_._

The fight at the end was much more intense than the one in the first film, raw and full of emotion, and Harry caught himself leaning forward unconsciously to watch more closely as the implacable Darth Vader and the young, hotheaded Luke Skywalker clashed back and forth.

Then Luke lost his hand, Harry gasped, and then came the _real_ surprise of the film.

* * *

When the film ended, Harry retrieved his glasses – which had fallen off, not that he'd noticed until then – and sank back onto the floor.

"So, what did you think?" Hermione asked, sounding very pleased with herself.

"You should have seen how Hermione reacted when we first showed her," Mr. Granger supplied. "I think it was about the same as you."

"Yeah, it was… yeah," Harry agreed.

Then he had an awful thought.

"I hope I'm not too much like Luke Skywalker," he said. "I did live with my aunt and my uncle, and I was certainly _told_ that my parents both died… but what if I'm actually Tom Riddle's son?"

"Don't be silly," Hermione told him. "Your proper name is Harry Potter, and James Potter was a real person – we've met loads of people who knew him. And Tom Riddle's too old."

On thinking about it, Harry had to admit that that did all make sense.

"So what happens next?" he asked.

"I think we should wait for that one until after dinner," Mrs. Granger suggested. "Speaking of which, I'd better go and get it ready. Have you ever had Chinese food, Harry?"

"No, but I'm sure I'll like it," Harry replied, interested in trying something new.

* * *

After the dinner, and the cake (Hermione and her parents had made sure he had a _cake_ for his birthday!), and the third Star Wars film, and playing a game where you had to describe a word without using any of the other words on the card, and everything else that happened that day, Harry bedded down in his tent (which was set up in the Grangers' spare room) with a happy sigh.

He'd been looking forward to today all week, but it had been much better than he'd expected… even if there was that odd House-Elf to wonder about. But even with Dobby's unexpected appearance, it had been a quite wonderful introduction to being twelve.

* * *

AN:

* * *

It continues to be 1992.


	19. An August Dragon

The next morning, a letter came back from Neville saying that he'd asked his grandmother, and staying with him over the rest of the summer holiday would be fine – they'd meet him in Diagon Alley around eleven o'clock.

Harry wrote a letter to his Aunt and Uncle, telling them about the change of plans and saying that he hoped the dinner had gone well (and wishing them a lovely summer), and posted it through the nearest postbox that morning. It cost money, while asking Hedwig to handle it would have been free, but it was worth the price to make sure that his Aunt and Uncle weren't too annoyed.

Then it was packing up his tent, putting it in his backpack, thanking the Grangers for their hospitality, and quickly planning with Hermione that they'd all go shopping for their school things on the same day after the letters had been sent out. Mr. Granger had a video camera out, this time, and carefully filmed Harry as he took off.

Harry wondered what that video looked like, but he did have to meet the Longbottoms so he couldn't really spare the time to fly back and ask.

* * *

It was a little before eleven when Harry arrived at the Leaky Cauldron. He dug his wand out of his bag and opened the way into Diagon Alley, then looked around for a good spot to wait where he'd have a great view of the Alley.

A moment later, he found the perfect spot, and the way he did that was that Neville and his grandmother were there. Mrs. Longbottom (or was she Granny Longbottom?) was tall, thin and bony, wearing a quite remarkable hat, and there was really quite a contrast between her and her shorter, somewhat rounder grandson.

But then, Neville was still young, so maybe he didn't look quite like he would as an adult yet.

"Ah, there you are," the woman in question said, with a sharp nod. "Mr. Potter, lovely to meet you. It _is_ a bit of a surprise, I must admit, but I'm glad to help you."

"I'm glad you can help," Harry replied, shaking her hand. "How was your birthday, Neville?"

"Oh, um – it went well," Neville told him. "There weren't as many people as last year, and I think I preferred it that way."

He brightened. "I liked the plant. And the spider plant's doing really well, my room's full of them now."

* * *

Over the course of the next hour's shopping (which took place at the insistence of Neville's grandmother) Harry decided that the appropriate term for her was definitely _Granny_. She was a little different in a few ways, perhaps, but a lot about her reminded him of Granny Weatherwax and thinking about her that way helped Harry know how to talk to her.

Then they went to Longbottom House by Floo, which was somewhere Harry didn't really know what to expect. It might have been anything from a slightly taller town house to a twenty-room mansion, mostly magic or mostly mundane, a small Norman castle hidden from the world by magical means or anything else.

In fact it was a large-ish country house in the middle of a hollow in the Yorkshire dales, made of stone, with gardens sweeping away on all sides and with four rows of four windows along the front. There were surprisingly few touches of magic visible from the outside, when Harry got a chance to fly around and look, and about the only thing he could really spot was that there was no road leading to it.

Indoors, however, it was another matter. Granny Longbottom told him quite proudly that the Longbottom family home had been continuously inhabited by eleven generations of Longbottoms, and there were signs of it everywhere – from the many moving paintings on the walls, some of whom went running off to get other paintings from elsewhere in the house to look at Harry, through the occasional magical curiosity or keepsake resting in glass-fronted cabinets, to the slightly bewildering way that going up or down a set of stairs wouldn't necessarily lead to the floor of the building that you'd expect. Neville's own bedroom was up one set of stairs and down one, and yet it was manifestly on the top floor of Longbottom House; Harry was put in a room on the first floor which was only about ten seconds away from Neville's room but was two floors down and on the other side of the building if you tried to use the windows to work it out.

And then there was the House-Elf, Tandy, who wore a teatowel embroidered with what Harry guessed was probably the Longbottom house symbol or something. She was just as shocked as both Neville and Granny Longbottom to hear the full story of what had happened with Dobby, and assured Harry that she would be making sure that no 'silly elvses' got involved with him while he was at Longbottom House.

* * *

Compared to Privet Drive – which no longer contained Harry, so couldn't really be said to be a Weyr – Longbottom House was certainly a new experience.

It was a long way out in the countryside, so it was harder to visit a library, with the closest really large town or city probably being York or Middlesborough or Leeds. On the other paw, it was private, and Harry didn't have anything in the way of chores to do (Tandy was quite scandalized by the thought of someone who wasn't her doing chores) and there _was_ a quite respectable collection of magic books.

Neville still had a bit of homework to do, so Harry was quite happy to join him in the study and occasionally help out – not by sharing his answers, but by talking about class. And Trevor seemed much less prone to get lost in the familiar surrounds of Longbottom House, while a bit of digging around meant that Harry even found an old Quaffle which he suggested they should play a game with – taking advantage of the Quaffle's way of drifting through the air instead of falling to play catch, which worked out surprisingly well with Harry flying and Neville on the ground.

The days didn't exactly all seem the same, as such, but it was quite easy to lose track of time as Harry's reading list slowly turned into his _read_ list and the only House-Elf around was Tandy… until a letter arrived for each of the Gryffindor soon-to-be-second years about halfway through August, telling them what they needed for Hogwarts.

* * *

Opening his letter, Harry checked that the stuff about catching the Hogwarts Express on September the First was the same as normal. That did make him wonder if the young witch he'd met on Skye would be coming down to catch the Hogwarts Express in a few years – it seemed silly to travel what must be about four hundred miles from Portree to Kings Cross and then take the Hogwarts Express all the way back up to Hogwarts when it would only be about fifty miles from her house. But then again, Hogsmeade was the only all-Wizard village in Britain and people from _there_ took the train, so maybe it was just something everyone did. (And now he thought about it it couldn't be hard to do it, with the Floo.)

While Harry was feeling sorry mostly for any Scots Muggleborn, who didn't have the option of the Floo, he moved on to the book list. There was no extra equipment, but there _were_ several new books – the second grade Standard Book of Spells, and seven books by Gilderoy Lockhart.

Neville had the same thing, and they wondered whether it was a second-year thing or a Defence thing. Granny Longbottom sniffed dismissively when she saw their book list, saying that Gilderoy Lockhart was a sensationalist and that his books were entirely overpriced for what they contained. (That left Harry worried for his friends – Hermione would be all right, and so would Neville, but Dean's family wasn't exactly well off and he knew Ron had to rely on hand-me-downs a lot of the time.)

Scheduling when to go and buy their books was easy, though, as they'd all agreed to go on the next Wednesday after their letters arrived.

"It's going to be pretty busy, isn't it?" Harry asked. "If they only sent the letters out this late, I mean, every day is going to be busy because everyone going to Hogwarts has to get all their things and there's only about two weeks left."

Both of the Longbottoms agreed, and Granny Longbottom added that she wasn't sure at all what Albus was thinking to send out the letters so late in the year.

* * *

While they were waiting for Wednesday, Neville somewhat hesitantly told Harry something about his family.

Harry had sort of assumed that Neville was a bit like him, in not having any surviving parents because of Tom Riddle. But it turned out that that wasn't quite correct – they were both still alive, but they'd been badly traumatized by a very nasty spell right at the end of Tom Riddle's terror campaign and had trouble recognizing him.

For some reason (and Harry felt quite guilty about it) it was that, rather than the loss of his own parents, which really brought home to him what Tom Riddle and his followers had actually been like.

He told Neville that it was nothing to be ashamed of, and that none of their other close friends would think less of him – but also that it was also okay to be _nervous_ about it and to not want to share. It seemed like the right thing to say, and Neville seemed to be a bit more comfortable, so Harry felt he'd been learning the right lessons from all those books he'd been reading.

He hadn't found one that described in sufficient detail how to wield a sword, though – and he _was_ keeping an eye out.

* * *

On Wednesday morning, Tandy made them a French breakfast – twisted pastries she'd baked herself, with vanilla cream and chocolate chips for filling. It was really very nice, though Harry had to admit to himself that he found it quite hard to think of something he'd eaten which had actually tasted _bad_ rather than less nice, and it filled them up nicely before they all headed to the Floo Room.

Now that Harry had had time to think about it, it wasn't surprising that there was a Floo Room in Longbottom House. It was one of the main ways Wizards got around, and so it obviously made sense to have a room specially for it – one with tables and chairs for people to sit while they waited for someone to arrive, and with nice thick carpets to catch someone if they stumbled a bit.

They were leaving this time, though, and Harry went first. He threw some powder, announced where he wanted to go, and spun through the Floo network before landing with a rush of air from his wings in the Leaky Cauldron.

"Look, mummy!" someone said, very excited. "That's a dragon!"

"Where?" their parent asked. "I can't see-"

"Look!" the boy insisted. "Right there!"

Harry explained about how people who didn't have magic couldn't see him as Neville and Granny Longbottom arrived, and wondered a bit about how the Floo actually worked. He knew he couldn't be Apparated, but he _could_ be Flooed – maybe it was like the way the route onto Platform Nine And Three Quarters worked?

Wondering how he could test how his resistance to magic worked without hurting himself, Harry followed Granny Longbottom out into Diagon Alley. There was a small crowd down the street, which looked like it was centered around Flourish and Blotts – probably trying to get the school books for the year – and they sat down by the entrance to the Alley to wait for the others.

"I hope that's not still there when we go there," Neville mumbled. "Maybe we should come back tomorrow?"

"Hermione and Dean are going to have to come by Muggle transport," Harry pointed out. "So we could, but we'd miss them."

"Right," Neville agreed. "I forgot about how much harder it is for Muggles to get around."

* * *

They'd been waiting about fifteen minutes when Dean turned up with his mum, who Granny Longbottom looked up and down with a sharp gaze before offering her hand to shake. Mrs. Thomas seemed a little put off by Granny Longbottom's hat, which included a stuffed vulture, but then Dean was saying hello to both of them.

"Hey, dragon-man," he chuckled, shaking Harry's hand. "Or is it dragon boy? Is there a word for it?"

"I quite like 'drake'," Harry supplied. "There aren't any actual things called drakes, so it's a nice word to use."

Neville shook Dean's hand as well, glad to see him after more than a month apart (though there'd been several letters back and forth, mostly using Granny Longbottom's screech owl in Neville's case) and then Dean asked why it was that they weren't surrounded by loads of people interested in how it was that Harry was a dragon.

"I'm not sure," Harry replied, thinking about it. "Maybe it's that almost everyone's used to me now? There was someone in the Leaky Cauldron, though… so it could be that it's just that standing in the corner like this is a lot like clinging to the ceiling."

"That sounds about right," Neville agreed, trying not to laugh. "You could call it, um, Wizards Don't Look Left Either."

It took them several minutes to explain to Mrs. Thomas why they all broke out in giggles.

* * *

Hermione was the next to arrive, and unlike the others she already had an opinion of the author Gilderoy Lockhart. Apparently he'd shown up a few times in the more recent books outlining great deeds, usually involving dealings with dark creatures (though Harry had to ask whether some of the creatures named in the book titles actually qualified as dark creatures; Banshees, Hags and Vampires were clearly Beings, while Ghouls _were_ beasts but were ranked at only two-X out of five on the scale of danger.)

It did seem as though the Defence teacher's subject matter for the year would involve dark creatures, unless everything else was going to be in the book they'd got last year.

Mr. Granger also took the time to let Harry know that the film he'd taken of Harry lifting off into the air was just baffling to him. Hermione saw Harry spread his wings, jump into the air and fly off, but the best that Mr. Granger could do was see Harry jump and then become strangely much less relevant and not worth noticing.

Nearly-identical twins with orange-red hair went past, giving Harry a long look, and for a moment Harry wondered if he'd forgotten what Fred and George looked like – until the _actual_ Weasley family all came out of the Leaky Cauldron, joining Harry and Dean and Neville and Hermione for shopping.

"Everyone's got to get the Lockhart books," Ron grumbled. "Mum loves them, but the one we've got is all full of obvious stuff – you know, throwing gnomes, that sort of thing."

He snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah, that reminds me. You've not met my Mum, or my Dad or my sister, right?"

"Don't think so," Harry replied, thinking about it.

"Right, okay… Mum, this is Harry."

Mrs. Weasley was a sort of plump-looking woman, and very different from either Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia. While the former was heavy-set but inclined to get very angry at the slightest provocation, and the latter was thin and quick to criticize, Mrs. Weasley's first action was to draw Harry into a hug and say how awful for him it must be to be separated from his aunt and uncle.

It was quite a nice experience, though Harry did have to explain that he'd learned over the years that his aunt and uncle seemed more comfortable when he wasn't around. He did do his best to accommodate them, and it depended on their moods, but Uncle Vernon on the whole was probably happier when he was somewhere else.

That made Mrs. Weasley look quite sad, or possibly angry, and Ron next pulled his father over.

Mr. Weasley was a different proposition entirely, full of questions, and seemed absolutely fascinated with Muggle gadgetry. He asked all about how Muggles handled post without owls to do it for them, and about how they made books in large quantities without magic, and when he heard that Harry sometimes cooked for his relatives he asked all about how the oven worked.

Fred and George (or was it George and Fred? Harry could never remember) interrupted a couple of times, trying to explain Muggle things to their father in a way that made Harry fairly sure they knew what they were talking about, but even so more than once Hermione, Harry and Dean had to share slightly baffled looks.

"Dad, stop it..." Ron grumbled. "You can talk about this stuff later… and this is Ginny."

Ginny seemed to have been trying to hide behind Percy. Harry gave her his nicest smile, remembering that some humans were scared of dragon teeth so making sure to keep his mouth closed, and she blushed a little.

"Ginny's got a bit of a crush," one of the Twins judged.

"I don't!" Ginny replied. "It's, um..."

"Oh, it's worse than a crush," the other Twin said, as their sister squeaked.

The first one looked at his fellow. "Worse than a crush?"

"Worse than a crush!" the second one agreed. (Harry decided that the second one might be George, and that therefore the first one might be Fred.)

"What could be more embarrassing than a crush?" Fred demanded.

"Well, you remember all those books about the Dragon Club?" George asked.

"I do!" Fred agreed. Harry remembered them too, some of the books he'd got in his first visit to Diagon but hadn't really understood.

"I think our sister's remembering all of those," George explained.

"Shut up!" Ginny groaned, blushing even hotter than before. "It's the first time I've met him and – and now he's going to think I'm weird!"

"What, because you liked books about dragons?" Hermione asked, snorting. "Not really. That's _normal_ to Harry."

Harry decided not to mention his opinion of the books. It made a lot more sense if they'd been meant for young girls anyway, and he wasn't going to think someone was silly for reading the best source of dragon books they had.

* * *

After managing to get Mr. Weasley away from a conversation with Mrs. Thomas and the Grangers about what Ceefax was, they headed around the Alley to sort out getting things. Ginny was the only one who needed to get a complete first-year kit, some of which Mrs. Weasley said she'd have to get second-hand to sort out their budget, and they needed to go to Gringotts anyway.

Percy needed some things for his NEWT level classes – apparently he'd got twelve OWLs at Outstanding, which Harry was really impressed by – and Fred and George had some things to pick up for fourth-year. It all got a bit complicated, in fact, though the three Muggle parents seemed fascinated by everything magical around them. It reminded Harry of how amazed he'd been when he first came to Diagon Alley, surrounded all of a sudden by the magical world, and that was what made the whole thing so pleasant.

* * *

There was a queue outside the bookshop when they got around to going there, but it seemed as though everyone wasn't actually going _in_ yet. Harry was a bit confused by that, until he noticed the banner over the front of the building which announced that Gilderoy Lockhart was going to be signing his autobiography from twelve thirty to four thirty that day.

"Oh, I hope we get to meet him!" Mrs. Weasley said, sounding very pleased by the idea.

"It's about quarter past twelve," Mr. Granger contributed, checking his watch. "So they should be starting the signing in about fifteen minutes."

"Should we wait and come back for that?" Hermione asked. "It must be worth it, he's written so many of the books we're going to be studying this year."

"Why don't we just go in and get our books?" Harry suggested. "Or look around for what else to get? I know I could spend easily that long picking out books… I was meaning to ask if they have anything about swords."

That announcement made most of the group look at him in surprise, and Harry explained that he meant because of how Neville had mentioned he was interested in that sort of thing in a vague way.

They decided to split up, with Hermione and some of the others joining the queue, but Harry went straight in to ask about what he was interested in and look at the new releases section.

* * *

Inspecting the Dragon Club books, Harry flipped through one to confirm his assessment of it – the dragons in it were still being treated more like broomsticks (or flying motorcycles, one of which Hagrid had parked in a little lean-to next to his hut) than like an actual flying animal.

Still, they did involve dragons.

Putting the one he'd been inspecting back on the shelf, Harry moved on to pick up a new crime book. This one seemed to be set in Uganda, which was interesting, but before he'd really started reading it someone spoke up.

"My word! Is this – can this be-?"

Harry looked up, and a man in pale blue robes and with wavy blonde hair held out his hand.

"Harry Potter, I'm sure of it!" the man announced. "It can only be you, there's only one dragon like you! Sly devil, coming in here before the start of the proper book signing – I like your pluck!"

He smiled a winning smile, and Harry shook the hand because it seemed like the done thing.

"It's a pity you're here now, rather than in a few minutes," the man went on. "Harry Potter and Gilderoy Lockhart – why, that would make the front page!"

"I think a lot of things make the front page of the Daily Prophet," Harry replied. "There's just not all that many wizards."

"Hah!" Mr. Lockhart laughed. "A fine point, but there's always competition – there's always competition, Harry. And to be on top you have to always be on top of your game."

"On top?" Harry repeated, tilting his head. "I thought you were talking about being on the front page, Mr. Lockhart."

"That's what I mean!" he explained, sounding positively enthused about it. "The great game! Once you've written five bestselling books, what other ways are there to keep score?"

He waved his hand. "Galleons? Why, any fool can inherit great wealth! But for your name to be on everyone's lips, that's the true contest!"

Harry wasn't really sure he was following this conversation.

"I know you had a good start, Harry," Mr. Lockhart went on, with a wink. "But sooner or later you'll learn how to really compete – how to really be famous, to keep your name in the headlines not with a single act but with continuous great deeds and foul things vanquished – and you can call me Gilderoy, of course, Harry."

Harry was now quite sure he wasn't following the conversation at all, and Mr. Lockhart ushered Harry over to the signing desk before taking one copy of each of the books on the booklist – and a copy of _Magical Me_, the autobiography – before signing the lot with a flourish and giving them all to Harry just as the book signing itself started.

There was a flash as a photographer took a photo, and Gilderoy went on to announce that _he_ would be the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher this year.

* * *

Some minutes later, Harry had donated his collection of signed books to Hermione on the grounds that she was more likely to enjoy them. Hermione had offered to swap with him, but Harry had just gone back in to buy some more instead, reasoning that he was the one who had the most money to buy books _and_ the one who hadn't got had to buy them so far.

When he came back from the counter with his backpack full of Lockhart books, it looked as though Ginny or Ron or one of the Weasleys had been the beneficiaries of Hermione's spares. Mrs. Weasley was waiting in line to get the books signed anyway, with most of her children, while Dean and Neville were queueing up to get their actual school books.

"Potter."

Harry's ears perked up a little, and he looked over to the door at the man who'd just spoken.

"Hello," he replied, smiling (without teeth) at someone who looked quite a lot like Draco. "Are you Mr. Malfoy?"

"Indeed," Mr. Malfoy confirmed. "Draco has told me a lot about you, Mr. Potter, and I've heard more from other sources."

His eyes flicked aside, to where Hermione and Mr. Weasley and some of the others were standing. "And about your taste in friends, as well… one wonders why you bother with them."

"Well, I think mostly it's because I met them on the train," Harry said, thinking about it. "Actually, a lot of the people I know I met on the train. But I did meet Draco, as well, and I suppose I'm not much of a friend of his – we don't spend any time together except in class. He didn't seem very nice, but maybe it was just a bad day."

Mr. Malfoy looked slightly confused by that, and looked back at his son – who was standing nearby, Harry noticed.

"I told you, Father," Draco said.

Harry waved at him, wondering what exactly it was Draco had told his father.

"Really, one wonders why Dumbledore even wants you in his school," Mr. Malfoy went on. "Hogwarts is for _humans_."

"Is it?" Harry asked, honestly confused. "I don't remember that rule being anywhere."

"There are some things you don't have to write down," Mr. Malfoy said. "Or shouldn't, anyway, though if Dumbledore is letting _beasts_ in-"

Harry was going to object that he wasn't sure he _was_ a Beast, because he was quite interested in getting involved in politics when he was old enough, but Mr. Weasley interrupted and asked Mr. Malfoy why he was wasting his time talking to people he clearly didn't think much of anyway.

It looked like there was going to be an argument, but then Granny Longbottom had brandished her wand and asked them both to please calm down. Then one of the employees at Flourish and Blotts had asked them all to leave as they were blocking the queue to the signing, and there'd been a bit of a crush on the way out because Granny Longbottom clearly agreed that they should stop getting in the way so much.

Harry certainly didn't want to disagree with her.

* * *

After a few more hours of just spending time together in Diagon Alley, including looking through some of the less normal shops off in the back streets, everyone headed home. Hermione and Dean left through the front door of the Leaky Cauldron, to take the tube home, while Ron and his family filed through the Floo one at a time. Neville went next, then Harry, and Granny Longbottom followed them back to Longbottom House.

It was only as he was going through his purchases, however, that Harry found something odd – an extra book that he hadn't intended to get. He had no idea where it might have come from, but the front page said that it was a diary for 1943.

Harry opened it up, wondering, and the smudged name on the first page caught his attention.

_Property of T M Riddle.  
_

Apart from that, it was blank.

After contemplating it, Harry put it in the bottom of his collection.

Maybe he'd ask Professor Dumbledore about why it was blank. Clearly Tom Riddle had put his name in it, so he should have used it… maybe there was a way a diary could be made so it could only be seen by the author? If it was, then if Professor Dumbledore could break the spell it might be useful.

* * *

"Okay, so… hold on," Harry asked, flipping back through the book. "What's your armour class?"

Neville checked his scribbled notes. "Um… six?"

"Right," Harry replied, and rolled one of the twenty-sided-dice. "That means… it just about misses."

He thought for a moment, then went on. "The orc's blade glances off your sword as you raise it, and he grunts something angry at you."

"I'll attack him back," Neville said. "Can I hit him with my shield?"

"I don't think so..." Harry picked up one of the other books and looked through that instead. "Oh, here we are. Yeah, but you get penalties and stuff. And you lose the bonus from the shield."

"This is way harder than Aragorn makes it sound," Neville frowned. "I wonder if we're doing it wrong?"

"I think that's what the levels and stuff are for," Harry replied. "Aragorn is meant to be a really high level, and so are the others. You're just starting out, like Aragorn was back when he was, um… Elfstone?"

"I thought it was Thongoril," Neville contested.

"No, I think that's when he's working for the Steward," Harry said. "Hold on, I'll go and check."

"No, wait," Neville said, and Harry paused. "I know what you mean. I'll just use my sword instead. So my THAC0 is twenty… let's see how this works."

He rolled his dice, they compared the numbers, and Harry nodded.

"Okay, you hit him."

Neville rolled the damage, which was a high number, and the orc fell over.

* * *

After they'd decided that the game was interesting, and Harry had decided that maybe he should try and put something together which involved dragons a bit (instead of just a fight between a new Ranger of the North and a band of four orcs), they spent the rest of the day reading through their new Defence textbooks.

The odd thing about them was that they didn't actually seem to be very good, as textbooks really. They told the story well, and it was quite exciting, but it didn't really explain _how_ the things were done – in the _Wanderings With Werewolves_ book, he explained how he'd defeated the Wagga Wagga Werewolf by casting a very complex charm that turned the werewolf back into a human (which sounded very useful) but all he said about the charm was the incantation and that it was very complex.

Meanwhile, in _Magical Me_, he mentioned the Patronus Charm (which Harry was naturally very interested in after seeing it last year) but not how to cast it. That seemed to be a trend, and Harry hoped that what was going to happen was that they were going to use the material as a basis for practical lessons.

Neville did have an interesting idea, which was that maybe the important bit of _Troubles with Trolls_ or _Year with a Yeti_ was all the stuff that happened before the actual battle. The hard bit, going out and finding the problem, or finding that there was a problem at all. Those bits seemed to be a lot more detailed in _how_ Mr. Lockhart went out and did his job, and that was interesting enough that Harry re-read the ones he'd already done with that new view on things.

Compared to that, though, the _Standard Book of Spells_ for grade two wasn't actually all that novel or interesting. It was more of a reference book, though that was quite enough to be going on with, and Harry noted down several spells he was interested in trying out himself if their class didn't handle them.

* * *

Harry took one more trip to Diagon Alley before the end of the holiday, and it was still quite busy there. Ignoring Quality Quidditch Supplies (which seemed to be mostly full of very expensive brooms), he went to Brigg's Brooms and got two Cleansweep Sixes – which seemed to be a good combination between being cheap and being good. They weren't the newest of the Cleansweep brooms, with the Seven having come out just a few years ago, and apparently that had helped bring the price down.

Harry also only just resisted flying out into London to look at what new books he could get. The back of one of the ones he'd got around to from his backlog mentioned one called Dragonsbane, which was one of those titles where he was interested to see if it really was about a bane of a dragon or whether the title was ironic, but there was that worry about whether Dobby would try and do something if he went out into the Muggle world on his own.

It really was quite annoying, this whole Dobby business, and Hermione _had_ been trying to find out what the laws were – but her letters said that she was having trouble, in between getting ready for their next year of school and getting herself caught up with maths and science and things like that over the summer.

* * *

It was on the last day of August, the day before they were going to head to Kings Cross, that Hedwig flew in through the window.

Harry looked up from _Break with a Banshee_, holding up his arm, and Hedwig landed on it before dropping the envelope for him.

"Thanks, girl," he told her, giving her a scratch, and she accepted it with a preen before taking flight and heading over to her perch. She fluffed her wings and settled down for a snooze, and Harry looked at the envelope – finding that it had his name on, in blue ink, but no address. And a stamp, for some reason.

Slitting the envelope open with his claw, Harry unfolded the paper underneath and read it.

Apparently it was from Aunt Petunia, who asked whether he could do one better than this summer and not come back next summer at all. She did say that Uncle Vernon had done well in his meeting, though, getting the contract he'd been after, which was nice – and that maybe if he could come around for long enough to do the gardening once a week next summer that would be ideal.

Harry was fairly sure that he would have to go to his official home address at least once a year, so he'd have to disappoint Aunt Petunia – but then he reached the bottom of the letter, which was a complaint about how his 'dratted' owl had flown in the window, gathered together a pen and paper, dropped them in front of her and glared balefully until she wrote something out.

"Hedwig, you didn't need to do that," he said. "I don't mind, really. And now you've annoyed my Aunt and Uncle."

Hedwig shook her head.

"You certainly annoyed Aunt Petunia," Harry went on, then realized – it was Monday, so Uncle Vernon would have been at work. "Well, at least you picked a weekday for it."

Hedwig made a self-satisfied _prek_ noise.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Longbottom House here is a quite well-off English country house in the Yorkshire Dales, plus magic.


	20. An Entirely Conventional Train Journey

On the morning of the first of September, Harry got up early as was his wont – in the past he'd sometimes read long into the night, but it was much better to have the same amount of sleep and start early than finish late, as far as Harry was concerned. It meant that it was easier to remember things you'd forgotten, it let you linger over breakfast, and in this particular case it let him write a letter to Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon.

In the letter he apologized that, unless things changed, he would have to come back to Number Four Privet Drive for at least half the summer. He also said that he'd see about making sure he could spend August away, though, and included two postscripts.

In one of them, he asked Aunt Petunia specifically what she thought Uncle Vernon would like for Christmas, and the same for Dudley, and in the other he asked Uncle Vernon the same question but reversed (so he was asked about what Aunt Petunia would like for Christmas).

Folding it up into the envelope and putting the address (the full address, with Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, and the postcode) Harry wondered whether he should post it the Muggle way in London this morning, the Magical way by sending Hedwig off (it might have been a bit unfair to ask her to make the return flight all the way to Hogwarts, but then again owls flew to Romania quite happily – it was probably magic) or the Muggle way by posting it from Mallaig or Fort William.

That conundrum occupied him over breakfast, and as he packed everything for the train journey. His trunk went in his tent, which he folded up and put in his slightly battered old backpack, then Granny Longbottom saw the backpack and Transfigured it into a much better looking one with a few Gryffindor touches – nothing blatant, just a red and gold colouring on it – and the straps repaired like new.

"There's no reason to be going around with something so broken down," she told him firmly, after Harry had said thank you. "Especially when you're flying around half a mile up with it. No, Mr. Potter, you've been a charming guest and it's just a common courtesy."

Harry was quite grateful anyway, and he double-checked that he had everything in his backpack. Tent, a set of robes to change into on the train, some books (including the complete first Dragonlance trilogy), a pair of sausage rolls, and the letter to Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon.

Neville had a bit more to do, because he had to load up his trunk, but a lot of that had been done last night and so they were ready to set off by nine in the morning.

"Goodbye, Mr. Potter!" Tandy waved to him, coming into the Floo room to see them off. "I hopes you has a good year!"

"I hope you have a good year as well," Harry replied, touched, and then they all went through the Floo to Kings Cross.

* * *

When they came out onto the platform, there was quite a bit of bustle going on. The Hogwarts Express wouldn't set off for another two hours, Harry knew, but with so many hundreds of students to get on it and so many parents to drop them off the platform would probably see something like a fifth of the total British wizarding population today.

"Don't forget to write," Granny Longbottom admonished Neville, and Neville nodded. "I'll send Darius to you in a few days so you don't need to use a school owl."

"Thanks, Gran," Neville replied, and Granny Longbottom examined him for a moment before nodding.

"And Mr. Potter," she went on. "Do let me know if that _dreadful_ business with the House-Elf is resolved, will you?"

"I will," Harry agreed.

He adjusted Hedwig's cage, then looked over at the train. "Should we get on early? I think the others are going to be coming in by the station entrance, except maybe Ron."

"It was pretty busy last time, I think," Neville replied, thinking. "Maybe we should grab a compartment now?"

That sounded good to Harry, so after Neville said goodbye to his Gran the two of them boarded the train. There were a few photo-flashes from the Wizards and Witches standing around, and Harry overheard a confused Muggle parent asking why everyone was so interested in the boy and whether he was a celebrity, but then they were on the train and picking out a compartment.

Harry helped Neville hoist his trunk up onto the ceiling rack, and Harry unzipped his bag before taking out his letter to Aunt Petunia and putting the bag down on the seat.

"I think I'm going to go and post this," he said. "I'll be back before long."

"Sure," Neville replied, taking Trevor out, then yelped as the toad promptly made a break for it. Harry raised a wing, bouncing the toad back to his friend, and Neville took a much tighter hold of his pet now.

* * *

Remembering that flying out the train exit would mean ending up several miles away around London Euston, Harry walked out of the entrance instead – fortunately avoiding bumping into anyone.

He passed Justin going the other way, who waved to him before pushing his cart towards the portal, and from there getting outside to post the letter was just a matter of walking for a few minutes.

Really, Harry was quite impressed with how easy it was for Wizards to get around. They had brooms, which were nice, and they had Apparition (at least the adults did), but Floo was the thing which really impressed him because it was basically just walking.

* * *

Making his way back through Kings Cross, Harry sort of wondered in an offhand way what he looked like to the Muggles. He knew that Mr. Granger said he looked sort of like a boy with black hair, which was what he'd been back when he was human, but obviously he must look older than he did then because otherwise it would be obvious something unusual was going on.

Then he reached the place where the portal to Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters was, and bumped into it.

Confused, he stepped back a bit and looked at where he was, to make sure he wasn't too far to the left or the right. Then he walked along the line of where the platform was supposed to be, running his tail along the wall, and there wasn't anywhere where it opened out.

It was a pity he'd left Hedwig in the compartment with Neville, because otherwise he could send a letter. Or he could fly to London Euston, but he didn't know if you could come into the portal the train used like you could go out of it.

Thinking about it, and wondering if the portal had broken down or something, Harry decided to sit down on his haunches and wait for a bit. He still had a few things he could do – he could fly to the Leaky Cauldron and take the Floo back to the platform again, or fly to London Euston and wait to see the train come out before following it, but there was no way that people wouldn't notice the portal being broken. There were still dozens of people to get on _at least_, and it was more than an hour to go.

Harry did wish he had a book, though.

* * *

Ten minutes later, there was a small queue waiting outside the location of the portal and trying to look like they were just there for a chat. There was Penelope (who was by herself) and a few of the other Muggleborns and their parents, plus some people who had one wizarding parent and one Muggle parent and who had decided to walk or come by train instead of Floo.

Harry was in the middle of a conversation with some redhead twins (not Fred and Other Fred – these were first-years called Tyler and Anne, or possibly Taira and Anna, it was a little hard to tell.) They seemed very interested in hearing what Hogwarts was like, and Harry did his best to reassure them about how classes worked and things like that.

He was fairly sure they were Muggleborn, because he knew that Ron and Neville had known more about what using spells was like than they did, but then they would say something which showed that they knew a _lot_ more than he'd expected and actually more than Harry did about some parts of the magical world.

It was a very interesting conversation, and Harry was sort of sorry in a way when a slightly mousy adult man came up to the barrier.

"What's going on?" he asked. "You're all for the platform?"

"If you mean Platform Nine and Three Quarters, then yes," said Penelope. "Are you from the Ministry?"

"That's correct," the man agreed. "Department of Magical Maintenance. Er, well… the platform's blocked, then?"

"Is there a name for it?" Harry asked. "I've been thinking of it as the portal."

"That's as good a name for it as any," the man said, and stepped forwards into the group before taking his wand out. "Hmm… yes, that's quite odd-"

Suddenly half-a-dozen people fell out of the wall at once.

"Well, whatever it was, it's gone now," the Magical Maintenance man said, as the people who'd been trying to get out of the portal picked themselves up. "Through you go, I'll sit outside here to make sure it stays working..."

* * *

The whole experience was quite odd, really, and Harry was glad to make it back onto the platform. He explained what the problem was to Neville, who was appropriately worried, and then they sat back to see when their friends would show up.

Dean was first, arriving just before ten, and then Hermione arrived a bit later. When she heard about the problem with the barrier she frowned, looking at her trunk, then unzipped it and got out some notes.

"I got some books about House Elves while we were in Diagon Alley," she explained. "We don't really know all that much about their magic, surprisingly little really – it's as if Wizards don't bother to try and find out about something once they think they understand all they need – but it says that, hold on."

Hermione went to the third page of her notes. "House Elves can't be mistreated, but that only applies to things that people do _to_ them and that they complain about. There's nothing stopping whoever it is who own Dobby from having him hurt _himself…_ which is terrible… and they're not allowed to leave. It says that they're really loyal, but none of the books said whether that was actually magical or just that they're… well, really loyal…"

She sat down. "But one of the books which explained the kind of magic House-Elves can do said that they could do some really impressive, difficult magic, and that's without even needing a wand – maybe Dobby's the one who did that to the barrier?"

"Maybe," Harry agreed. "Yeah, that would make sense, but it's kind of silly – though if he's trying to keep me safe then perhaps he's panicking about it."

"But why would stopping you from catching the Hogwarts Express keep you from going to Hogwarts?" Neville asked.

The others looked at him, and he flushed. "I mean, um, even if _I_ got shut out of the platform I could do something about it," he explained. "There's Floo connections in Hogsmeade, and in Hogwarts too, though I don't know if those ones are turned on a lot of the time… I could just walk to the Leaky Cauldron and go there by Floo."

"That _is_ a good point," Dean agreed. "Hermione or I would find it harder, but we could still go to Diagon Alley and ask. And Harry can _fly_."

"You could be Apparated, as well," Neville pointed out. "Harry can't."

There was a long pause, as they considered that.

"I think Dobby is a bit silly," Harry decided. "I wonder what he thinks this awful plan is that I need to be away from Hogwarts for."

He rummaged in his bag, and took out the September 1992 Quibbler – delivered just that morning. "Maybe there's something in here, I haven't had a chance to read it yet."

"You don't honestly believe that, do you?" Hermione asked, sniffing.

"Not really," Harry replied. "But it's interesting to read, and sometimes they _do_ get things right… even if it is only by chance."

He picked a random page. "This one says that someone called Mafalda Hopkirk in the Improper Use of Magic Office is being bribed by a French dark lord called _Monsieur Secretperson_."

"It says…. What?" Hermione asked, completely confused.

"Maybe that's because Lord Voldemort is a French-sounding name?" Dean suggested. "I think that sounds like one of the ones they made up, to me."

Harry moved on to another one. "And this one says that Rubeus Hagrid was seen buying currycombs in Knockturn Alley. That one sounds kind of plausible, but it _does_ suggest that it's because he's in a romantic relationship with Fluffy, and I don't think that's true."

They contemplated that.

"Yeah, that raises way too many questions," Dean decided. "Anything new you found to read?"

"Hold on," Harry told him, rummaging around in his bag again. "Here, I was going to – oh, actually, do any of you still have those letters about when we're allowed to use magic?"

Hermione did, and she got it out of her bag.

As she unfolded it, someone knocked on the door.

Opening it without asking, someone who looked like they were about a fourth- or fifth-year poked their head around the door. "Have you heard? There's supposed to be a _sphinx_ on the train!"

"Really?" Harry asked, interested. "I didn't know, no."

The other student looked at Harry, and blushed slightly. "Well, er… sorry about the noise."

He shut the door again.

"I wonder why there'd be a sphinx on the train," Neville said. "Do you think Dumbledore's decided to keep something else safe?"

That set them off on talking about other ways that something could be magically protected, like making a room without any entrance and putting it under the Fidelius Charm, or even just throwing it in the sea if you didn't care about getting it back. It was fun to talk about, and to look through their new spellbooks (and the books of Professor Lockhart) for ideas about what to use, and that and the occasional person checking if the compartment was full distracted them enough that they didn't notice the time – until Ron knocked on the door, only ten minutes before the train was going to leave.

"What a nightmare," he groaned, as he got his packed lunch out of his bag and Harry heaved the trunk up to go with the rest. "There were five of us getting ready this year… and then there was traffic, so we nearly didn't make the train."

"Can I come in with you?" Ron's sister asked. "It looks like there's space."

"Come _on_, Ginny..." Ron groaned.

"It should be all right," Harry told her. "I'll just go up on the trunk rack like I did last year. Besides, Ron, you're not going to leave your sister to Lee Jordan's tarantula, are you?"

Ron's ears went pink, and Ginny turned about the same colour.

"Come on," Hermione said, making space next to her. "If Dean starts talking about football, commiserate. His team got relegated, so he's kind of upset about it."

"Oi!" Dean complained, and Ginny smiled a little.

"That's all right," she said. "I'm used to that sort of thing. Ron supports the Chudely Cannons, remember?"

That made Ron complain, and Dean as well – not liking his own tragically and unjustly relegated football team being compared to the generally-considered Worst Quidditch Team In The World – and they hadn't finished talking about sport by the time the train set off.

* * *

About ten minutes after they pulled out of Kings Cross (and with at least three more groups of students going past asking where the sphinx was – which made Harry vaguely nostalgic for his first year) Percy stopped by. He asked Ginny how things were going, and after she'd said it was okay Harry raised a paw.

Percy didn't notice, possibly because Harry was lying on the luggage rack (and wizards didn't look up, Harry remembered) so he dangled his tail and waved it a bit to get Percy's attention.

"Yes, Harry?" Percy asked. "Is something wrong?"

"Not really," Harry replied. "I was wondering if we could use magic now we're on the train."

"Oh – yes, that's fine," Percy told him. "So long as you don't hex anyone or anything."

"Great," Harry smiled, and got his wand out of his backpack.

"What are you going to do, Harry?" Ron asked.

"I had a couple of ideas about using that book copying spell," Harry explained, as Percy decided that he may as well shut the door. "Ginny, Fred and George said you liked those books about dragons?"

Ginny made an _eep_ noise, blushing, and Harry wondered about that reaction before deciding to just ignore it.

"Well, I've got lots of books about dragons," he went on to explain, rummaging for a bit before getting out _Dragonsong_. "Hold on… _Xerographia."_

The spell went well, which was pleasing – he hadn't done it in a while – and now Harry had two copies of _Dragonsong_. He did the same thing to _The Hobbit_, then passed them both down to Hermione, and she handed them to Ginny.

"Those are the ones I've got with me," he explained. "There's more, but they're in my trunk."

"Thanks," Ginny said, looking at them – her ears still pink. "You shouldn't, really..."

"They don't cost anything," Dean pointed out. "They're just made by magic. I've got some of them myself."

He shrugged. "It's kind of a pity we can't copy our textbooks, but that's magic for you."

Harry nodded, then put the books back and took another one out.

"Is that a new one?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah, it's kind of a gamble," Harry admitted. "I got it in a bookshop in London, I've got no idea what it's about."

He tapped it with his wand. _"Xenographia."_

"You haven't read it yet?" Neville asked, then frowned. "Wait, isn't that the _other_ spell?"

Harry nodded, and inspected the result.

The original copy he'd got was still just as it had been, but the new one was in a different language completely to the Chinese characters it had started with.

Unfortunately, it had ended up in Russian, complete with Cyrillic characters.

"I think I need to practice this spell a bit more," he admitted. "And we're going to have a lot of copies of whatever this is by the time I'm done..."

* * *

After four more castings, giving him copies in Germanic Fraktur, French, Egyptian Heiroglyphs and a language Harry couldn't even identify, he decided to give it up for now and practice again later when there was somewhere to put the probably-inevitable large numbers of books.

If he _could_ get it to translate things into English, though, there were probably other books he could read, which would be nice. Maybe he'd even be able to find some which were supposed to have been translated but the translation hadn't worked well?

He put them away in his bag, which was bulging a bit by now with the extra copies, and instead got out _Small Gods_. They were passing not far from a city, right now, and it looked like it wasn't long until lunchtime – which would be when the cart came around, and Harry saw no reason not to buy everyone lunch again.

As he started reading, though, the compartment door slid open to reveal Draco, Vincent and Gregory.

Draco looked at Hermione, Ron, Neville, Dean and Ginny, frowned, and opened his mouth. Then he looked up, catching sight of Harry.

Harry waved, folding his book over his talon with his other hand to keep his place.

There was a long and slightly awkward pause, and Harry wondered if Draco was expecting one of them to say something first. Then the Slytherin second-year slowly stepped backwards, and shut the door again.

Ginny blinked. "...what just happened?"

"Draco," Dean shrugged. "He's kind of a berk."

"What's a berk?" Ron asked.

"...you know," Dean said, frowning. "A berk. Someone who's… a berk."

He looked up at Harry. "You know what a berk is, right?"

"Not really," Harry replied. "If you'd called him a twit I might know what you meant."

"_I_ know what a twit means, I don't need you to explain that one," Ron said. "I've got at least two of them in my family."

"And which two were you thinking of?" Ginny asked him.

"...do I have to answer that?" Ron replied.

"I think by saying that you _have_ answered it," Neville told him.

"I could have been talking about the twins," Ron defended himself. "In fact, I _was_ talking about the twins. I decided."

"I don't think that's how it works," Dean said. "I don't think you can decide to have been talking about something else all along."

"But I wasn't talking about something else all along," Ron replied. "I was talking about Fred and George."

"His story checks out," Neville contributed.

"Can't I decide that Ron was talking about me?" Ginny asked. "And be offended?"

"Well, if you decide that I was talking about you, based _only_ on how I said twit," Ron began, "doesn't that mean that you're accepting that you're a twit?"

Ginny's lips moved.

"I'm confused," she admitted. "Should I just read that book Harry made me?"

"Probably," Hermione advised.

Picking one of the books at random, Ginny opened _The Hobbit._

Four seconds later she looked up. "What's a Hobbit?"

"It sort of makes sense as you keep reading," Harry replied. "They're sort of like short people."

"Oh, like dwarves?" Ginny asked.

"Not really," Neville said. "There are dwarves in _The Hobbit_, but Hobbits aren't dwarves."

Ginny frowned for a long moment.

"I'm going to keep reading and see if it does make sense," she decided. "I do like the idea of an underground house, though. It's sort of like… a den, or something."

* * *

The trolley came around, and Harry got them all a pile of things to eat. Ginny seemed a bit embarrassed about it, saying that Harry didn't need to, but Harry shrugged and pointed out that the collection of pastries and sweets and all sorts of things had only cost about a galleon – so they may as well.

Ginny still tried to protest, but then Harry ate a cauldron cake and she stopped saying anything.

"Oh, yeah, that's right, you don't know about that," Neville realized. "I don't think we've ever found anything that Harry _doesn't_ eat."

"But that… that was wrapped," Ginny said weakly. "I thought dragons mostly ate meat?"

"That's pretty nice too," Harry agreed readily, rummaging through things and picking out some tooth-flossing mints and liquorice wands. "But I don't think I'm the same sort of dragon as most dragons, because I'm twelve and I can still fit in the compartment…"

"Is Harry not what you expected of a dragon, Gin?" Ron asked.

"Shut up, Ron," Ginny replied. "I still haven't got to the bit in that book where the dragon shows up. I don't know _what_ to expect a dragon to be like."

"I think there's something about not tickling them?" Dean asked.

"Well, maybe Nora will be more like Ginny expects dragons to be," Harry suggested. "…oh, I don't think we had this last time. Crystallized pineapple?"

"Yeah, I've heard they sell it in Honeydukes," Ron contributed. "Maybe the trolley lady works there most of the year?"

Harry threw a piece in the air. It missed his mouth completely, bounced off his wing, and landed on Scabbers – who jolted awake with a startled squeak, noticed the sweet, and looked around for a moment before starting to nibble it.

Everyone but Ginny dissolved into laughter, and Harry ate the next piece in a much more normal way.

"Who's Nora?" Ginny asked.

"You might know her as Norberta?" Dean said, and Ginny shook her head. "Norberth?"

Shake.

"...Ron?" Hermione began. "Did you _and_ your brothers completely fail to mention that Hogwarts has a dragon for a mascot now?"

"Wait, what?" Ginny asked. "How did _that_ happen?"

Harry opened his mouth, ready to explain, then paused.

Should he mention how Hagrid had sort of got hold of the egg illegally? Even if it was all sorted out, Hagrid was his friend, and not properly explaining it could be confusing.

But if he did properly explain, it would take ages.

"Professor Kettleburn seized a dragon egg from someone who was probably You Know Who," Dean summarized. "Then it hatched."

Harry decided that that was probably the simplest explanation that made sense.

"You Know Who?" Ginny repeated, sounding distinctly stunned. "I thought Harry killed him, or something!"

"Professor Dumbledore thinks he did," Harry said, tilting his head a little. "But apparently he's only mostly dead."

"You hadn't seen _Star Wars_ until this summer but you know _The Princess Bride_?" Hermione asked. "Your aunt and uncle have strange taste."

"What's _The Princess Bride_?" Harry replied, confused.

For some reason, Hermione responded to that by getting out a piece of paper and starting to take notes.

* * *

One of the odd things about a train journey lasting more than seven hours was that it was quite easy to run out of things to talk about, especially if you'd had several hours together only a couple of weeks ago.

The Hogwarts Express wound north, crossing the border into Scotland, and conversation died down a bit. Ginny sometimes asked questions about what was going on in _The Hobbit_, Ron asked to borrow _Tooth and Fang_ and spent the next few hours giggling, Neville and Dean played a game of chess and Hermione read one of Lockhart's books.

For Harry's part, he was very much enjoying reading the Dragonlance Trilogy again but knowing what was going on this time – despite the occasional interruptions when someone who'd waited hours to ask about it tried to find out where the sphinx on the train was – and it was about five in the afternoon when there was a sudden clatter outside.

"What was that?" Dean asked, confused, then the door trembled a little. It opened a crack, and an orange blur came running into the room.

It was a fox, which was quite odd – orange fur, brush tail, pointed ears – and it looked around with an alert gaze. Scabbers squeaked in terror and Ron put his hands protectively over the rat, and the fox sprang up to an empty seat where it seized what was left of a cauldron cake in its jaws.

Hedwig didn't seem bothered at all.

"Where did that come from?" Hermione asked, confused, as the fox curled up a bit on the seat and started eating the leftover pastry. "I didn't know foxes were allowed as pets. I thought it was only owls, cats or toads."

"Or rats," Harry pointed out. "I know Ron probably wouldn't mind if he had a pet that wasn't really allowed, but Percy had Scabbers first."

"Oh, yeah, that's right," Dean agreed. "And there's Lee Jordan's tarantula, I know about that one..."

"Maybe the rule about what pets you're allowed is a new one," Harry wondered, as the fox finished snacking on the pastry. "It's odd that Puffskeins and stuff aren't allowed."

"I had one of those once," Ron said, still hiding Scabbers in his hands. "I've no idea what happened to it, though."

"I think Fred happened to it," Ginny told him, looking up from her book. "I'm not sure though."

The fox licked its paw, getting all the pastry off, then crouched and jumped up to the headrests of the seats Hermione and Ginny were sitting in. It yawned, stretching first one way and then the other, and curled up to dangle its tail down where it just brushed the tip of Hermione's hair.

"Hey," she protested, shifting to the side a little, and the fox's tail twitched to brush her hair again.

Hermione moved her head in the other direction, and got tail-brushed yet again, before just giving up and moving over to a free seat.

The fox promptly flopped down onto the just-vacated seat, curling into a ball, and Hermione huffed.

* * *

About twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door.

Ron glanced around, then told whoever it was to come in, and Harry watched with interest as Tyler (or Taira, he still wasn't sure) looked around the door.

"Did any of you see a vixen come in – oh, there she is!" he said, opening the door all the way and scooping the vulpine up with both hands. She made a moderately annoyed noise, and Tyler touched her on the nose.

"Is she yours?" Harry asked, interested. "I didn't see her when we met earlier."

For some reason Taira sniggered at that. "Yeah, she's kind of hard to find when she wants to be… I turn my back and she's vanished, you know?"

"I know the feeling," Neville commiserated, checking to make sure Trevor actually was where he was supposed to be and breathing a sigh of relief that the toad was still in his pocket.

"Is there anything she's not allowed to eat?" Dean said. "There was some chocolate around earlier, and I know dogs can get ill if they eat chocolate."

"She can eat that, that's fine," Tyler assured him. "Thanks for keeping track, though."

Harry asked where his sister was, and _that_ made the first-year snigger as well.

"Around," he said, scratching the vixen under her chin. "I'd better get back to my compartment, though, I think we're supposed to be getting changed soon."

* * *

Getting changed sounded like a good idea to the six of them, as well, and they did it the same way they had the previous year – in relays. Harry thought it was a bit of a pity that he couldn't fit his tent in the compartment, because that would have given them a lot more space, and wondered when they learned how to make an existing room bigger.

It wasn't in their second year spellbook, he knew that much.

That took longer than expected, because just about everyone had grown a bit over the summer (except Harry, but he didn't really know when he would have his next growth spurt) and while robes were easier to adjust to that sort of thing than Muggle clothes were it was still a bit fiddly.

By the time that was done the sun was just starting to sink, and Harry hopped back up on the rack for a last bit of reading before they arrived. He'd got to the bit where The Everman showed up, and he was just reading about his reaction to being spotted when Hermione gasped.

"Oh, no, I almost forgot!"

"What?" Dean asked. "What is it, is something wrong?"

Rummaging in her bag, Hermione produced a book. It said STAR WARS in big words at the top, and the front cover had pictures of several people he recognized and a few he didn't (including a man with white hair and a white beard, though not nearly as impressive a beard as Dumbledore).

"I read this over the summer," Hermione explained. "I thought you'd like it – since you've seen the films now, I mean."

Harry reached down and took it, seeing that it was called _Heir to the Empire_.

"Is this what happens next?" he asked.

"Well..." Hermione began. "There's a few other Star Wars books, I think. But this one seems to be the one that went the furthest out in front, it's five years after the end of _Return of the Jedi_."

"Thanks!" Harry said. "Is it okay if I borrow this to read?"

Then he remembered that it was a Muggle book, and got out his wand from his robe pocket. "Or I could just copy it."

Ginny giggled, which Harry thought was a good sign. She'd seemed shy at first, but it seemed like the last few hours had helped her get used to the idea of being with Ron's friends.

Actually, now he thought about it, did wizards and witches who _knew_ they were wizards and witches go to primary school? It might be a difficult thing to not mention in the playground…

* * *

Harry didn't get very far into _Heir to the Empire_ before the train slowed down, but he liked it already. It had a nice feeling to it.

But all too soon the Hogwarts Express was stopped at the station, and everyone was getting out. Hagrid called for the first-years, and Harry watched as everyone who was a first-year went over to that end of the platform.

There was Ginny, of course, and he also waved to Taira and Anna (who seemed to have left their pet fox on the train), but then Harry saw a bubble of chatting first-years who weren't taking up the space in the middle.

He rose up on his hind legs to check, remembering not to flap his wings for stability, and saw that it was the Warg he'd met last year, June – the one who he'd helped to pick what the human name for her race actually was.

He hadn't know she was on the train, and it was nice to see her, so he waved – though then he saw the sphinx everyone had been talking about, who clambered down from the train to the platform with care and moved with what wasn't quite a prowl towards where Hagrid was waving.

Maybe _that_ was why she was here, then. It was nice to think about there being some more non-human students at Hogwarts this year.

* * *

"Hey, Harry, did you know about this?" Ron asked, as they reached the other end of the platform. "They've got carriages which don't have anything pulling them!"

"They do have something pulling them," Neville said quietly.

"Huh?" Ron asked, confused. "No, they clearly don't."

"Oh, hold on, I know what's going on," Dean said. "Neville's the only one who can see them for some reason. This is just like the Harry and Muggles thing again. What do they look like, Nev?"

"Well, uh… kind of odd?" Neville tried. "They actually look a bit like Harry… or, like Harry mixed with a horse? Think of a horse, but black and with kind of… leathery skin, and wings a lot like Harry has."

Hermione was already getting out her copy of _Fantastic Beasts_. "Like a horse?"

She thumbed through to the end. "Not going to be a unicorn… well, either they're Beings or they're a Winged Horse… aha! Thestrals have the power of invisibility."

She shut the book again. "Well, there we go. That's interesting, Thestrals are very rare. I wonder where they came from."

Harry looked at where there wasn't anything to see, and reached out his paw. Some of the carriages were already setting off, looking like nothing was moving them, but then Harry touched thin air and it moved under his paw.

"Neat," he said. "I wonder why only Neville can see them?"

They talked about it for a couple of minutes, and Blaise came over to chat to them about it as well – it turned out he could see them too – before deciding to get into them.

Harry tried getting into one carriage, and the wheels all fell off at once.

"Blimey, Harry," Ron said, between sniggers. "Have you gained weight?"

"I don't _think_ so," Harry replied, quite embarrassed. "I'll just walk alongside..."

* * *

AN:

* * *

Off to Hogwarts they go.


	21. Second Year Is A Little Different

It was Harry's first time heading up to the castle in a 'normal' way, at least at the start of term; it was tradition that the first-years took the boats back and forth, he remembered, though Harry supposed he could just fly anyway.

It was a lot shorter of a route this way, and the invisible horses pulling the carriages moved fairly quickly, so they reached the front doors after only a few minutes. Professor Flitwick was there waiting for them, and ushered them in with a smile.

Harry looked back as the last of the returning students went through the door and saw as Professor Flitwick closed them, probably so that Hagrid could knock on the doors as part of the Sorting Ceremony, then took his place at the Gryffindor table.

"What subjects did you pick?" he asked Percy, interested.

"Oh, well-" Percy began. "I could have done any of them. I think all of them would have been too much work, though, so I've done Arithmancy, Runes, History, all the wanded classes of course, and Potions."

Harry was impressed – that sounded like seven classes, unless he'd forgotten one, and as far as he knew that was quite a lot at NEWT level – and said so.

Percy seemed quite pleased by that, saying that he did his best, though he wasn't quite sure yet where he'd go after finishing Hogwarts. Harry suggested maybe doing something like a 'gap year', which was a phrase he'd heard, but when Percy asked what that was Harry had to admit he wasn't really sure how to explain what it meant properly.

Most of the Professors were already here, though there was still an empty chair where the Divination teacher was supposed to sit, and Professor Lockhart (as he was now) was talking with Professor Sinistra.

For some reason, Professor Sinistra didn't seem very impressed.

Then the doors opened, and a wave of whispers and stares rolled out as Professor McGonagall strode in at the head of the first-years.

Harry supposed that maybe some people hadn't gone to see the sphinx – whatever her name was – and June was someone he hadn't even heard any rumours about on the train. So that was interesting.

"So, I'm not really clear on this," said Cormac, who Harry remembered was the current Gryffindor Seeker. "Why is there a wolf in the first years?"

"She's not really a wolf," Harry replied. "Or not properly. We talked last year, she's descended from werewolves, and I think we decided the right word was 'warg'."

"Wait, she can talk?" Cormac asked.

Fred snorted. "Mate, you're asking that question to a _dragon_."

Other Fred nodded. "Yeah, she's probably more erudite than that Goyle bloke."

The discussion went a little quiet, and the Sorting Hat broke into song.

This time it was all about judging by what was inside, and how that was a thing he did very well, and how Slytherin sought the crafty and clever, Hufflepuff the close-knit and loyal, Gryffindor the brave and bold and Ravenclaw the witty and wise.

Harry wondered whether he couldn't think of two alliterative words for what Hufflepuff stood for.

Then the Sorting began, as Professor McGonagall read out the first name from her long scroll (who went to Hufflepuff).

A boy called Colin was the first new Gryffindor, and sat down as close to Harry as he could get. He looked like he had a lot of questions, and Harry wondered if it was a bad sign that he'd sat down next to the Twins.

Though, speaking of which, Tyler and Anne were twins as well, so that might make things confusing. Actually, Parvati and Padma were twins too, but for some reason they didn't come across nearly as Twin-ish as Fred and George did. Maybe it was that they'd never tried to confuse anyone about which one was which… as far as Harry knew.

Several of the first-years had been sorted while Harry wasn't paying attention, so they were onto F, and there was a bit of a hush as June padded up to the three-legged stool and inspected it.

"Do I have to sit on here?" she asked, looking back at Professor McGonagall.

"You do not, Miss Forrester," the Professor told her. "For some reason everyone else prefers to, though."

June picked up the hat with a paw and put it on her head, putting that same paw on the stool once she was done, and there was a pause. Harry could see the hat mumbling to itself, and then it announced that June was to go to HUFFLEPUFF!

Hagrid applauded up at the head table, and Harry did the same.

* * *

When 'Harper, Henry' went to Slytherin, Harry remembered with a feeling not unlike dread that the school song was going to be sung at the end of the meal.

Wondering if he could get some cotton wool or something, he watched as student after student was sorted – there was an airy blonde girl called 'Lovegood, Luna' who went to Ravenclaw, then the Sorting went through M and N and O and P. There was nobody with an initial of Q, then there was an R (who came to Gryffindor) and after that Professor McGonagall called forward 'Sanura, Tanisis'.

The sphinx walked forwards, uncertainty written on her very human face, and placed the hat on her head. Her leonine tail twitched a bit, then stilled, and Harry wondered how the Sorting Hat was reacting to a third non-human in just two years.

After some consideration, the Sorting Hat announced in a booming voice that Tanisis was to go to RAVENCLAW, and she breathed a sigh of relief before loping over to take a somewhat awkward seat on the bench.

Harry noticed that June had basically just ignored the bench and sat at one end of the table, then looked back at Professor McGonagall – no new name had come, and there was nobody on the stool.

"Headmaster?" the Professor asked. "I may need some assistance with this one."

Dumbledore rose to his feet, and gave a cheerful wave to the massed students as he walked around the high table to join Professor McGonagall.

"Ah, I see," he said, into the quiet of the hall. "Yes, those are katakana. Quite a surprise, but I suppose it should be expected."

He said something more quietly, and Professor McGonagall tapped the parchment with her wand.

"Smith, Anna," she called.

* * *

Anna (or Anne) and her twin brother both turned out to go to Slytherin, in her case after about twenty seconds of consideration and in his case almost instantly, and Ron frowned.

"How come _he_ went to Slytherin?" he asked. "He seemed nice."

"Blaise is nice," Harry pointed out. "So are Daphne and Tracey. And I don't know most of the other Slytherins very well, so a lot of them are probably nice too."

"Yeah, but that's just anecdotal evidence," Ron dismissed.

"Where did you learn that word?" Neville said, blinking. "That doesn't seem very like you, Ron."

Ron looked torn between being offended by that and answering the question, and eventually admitted that it had been in a book.

"Hey, I think it's great," Harry told him.

Ginny was the last to be sorted, going to Gryffindor in seconds, and Professor Dumbledore stood up as soon as the three-legged sorting stool was gone.

"Welcome to Hogwarts, one and all!" he said. "And a very warm welcome to all of our first-years, who I hope will fit in well in their new Houses. If they do not, well, I am sure the Sorting Hat would be willing to accept the blame."

A rustle of chuckles ran through the hall.

"Before we begin the feast, I would like to say a few words," he went on. "But we can't always get what we want."

He sat down, and the feast appeared.

* * *

Harry had forgotten just _how_ good Hogwarts food was, especially during the feasts. The House-Elves at the castle always seemed to be so good at putting the flavours together, including in making things with flavours he'd never considered before (like mixing garlic and rust, which worked _very_ well).

It did mean that some of the meals came with little notes that said they were for Harry only, and about ten minutes into the feast Harry decided to check to make sure that the same thing was going on for June and Tanisis. The reaction he got at the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables was a little odd at first, since it was so common for people to stick to their own table, but once he explained what he was there for everyone agreed that it was a good idea.

It turned out that June largely just ate meat. As she explained, werewolf-descended or not she _was_ a wolf, and that meant she got everything she needed from meat (and that some human-normal flavours like chocolate or coffee were things she knew were dangerous to her – which got quite a lot of the Hufflepuffs gasping at her misfortune). She said there were some non-meat things she liked, though, and in particular there was a dish of carrots cooked underneath a roasted chicken which tasted exotic and interesting.

Tanisis was a little more varied in what she could eat, and was deep in a conversation with several of the Ravenclaw upper-years (including Penelope, who was in Prefect-mode) about what it was she could or couldn't eat. Meat was necessary, indeed bones and what she politely called 'lights' – which Harry realized meant innards – were something she needed as part of her diet, but not in huge amounts and they could be quite spread out. So long as that was taken into account, she could eat most things humans could, though apparently she didn't like broccoli.

At all.

* * *

Back at the table, Harry found that the new first-year Colin couldn't restrain himself any more from asking all sorts of questions. Much to Harry's pleasure, though, a lot of them weren't anything like the questions he'd been barraged with last year – Colin wanted to know what it _felt_ like to be a dragon, and Harry didn't mind talking about that a bit.

About how it was really quite nice, because he didn't ever get hurt much; about how he could fly on his own wings, which was something that he could thoroughly recommend. About how writing was kind of difficult, and a lot of other things built mostly for humans were a bit awkward, but having a tail was nice.

Harry was actually thinking idly about finding a way to attach his wand to his tail, so he could try casting spells while still on all fours – holding it in his paw did work, but it meant he had to be careful whenever he put his foot down.

Colin was also really interested in asking about what class was like, and Harry tried his best to summarize them as succinctly as possible and include some tips about what he'd learned – things like the basics of note-taking, or how it was best to do your homework sooner rather than later.

After that, though, Harry caught up with the others in second year (like Seamus, who seemed remarkably okay with the fact that all four of the other boys in Gryffindor in his year were part of the same circle of friends and he was thus ending up with all four non-Hermione girls) and with some of the upperclassmen and women. When pudding came around, he tried a jam tart, and was a little surprised to discover that there were all-new foods that hadn't been around last year – like a fudge torte, and an experimental pasta-and-chocolate combination that sounded sort of like someone had got the recipes mixed up.

Tasted nice, though.

* * *

As people seemed to be getting to the end of the meal, Harry got up to walk over to the high table. He waved, to get Professor Dumbledore's attention, and the Headmaster looked up with a smile.

"Ah, Harry," he said. "Tell me, how have you been enjoying your second first day at Hogwarts?"

"It's been interesting, Sir," Harry replied. "Do you mind if I bring you something after the end of the feast? I think it's in my room at the moment, but I want to give it to you as soon as possible."

Professor Dumbledore inspected his plate, using his knife to turn over a few peppermint wrappers, then found one that still contained a peppermint and lifted it out.

"Ah," he said, putting it to the side. "Marvellous. And yes, Harry, of course you may. The password is currently 'Percy Pig', and you may visit whenever you wish so long as it is before eleven in the evening; after that time I will be getting my beauty sleep."

His eyes twinkled. "As I am sure you can agree, I am rather in need of some beauty sleep."

"I don't think I can tell either way, Sir," Harry said. "Thank you."

"Oh, the pleasure is all mine, Harry," Professor Dumbledore told him. "I always have time for my students, though how _much_ time does rather depend on my schedule."

He checked a silver pocket watch, and nodded to himself. "You had better get back to your seat, Harry, I believe I have an announcement to make."

Harry walked back to his seat, and the first thing that happened when he reached it was that Colin asked what they'd been talking about. The second thing, however, was Professor Dumbledore standing up and clearing his throat.

"I am sure that you have all enjoyed a long meal after a long train journey," he said. "I regret that we could not make the meal as long as the train journey, but Professor Vector informs me that if we did that then the feast would end tomorrow, and that would never do."

He looked around the room. "For those of us who are new to the castle, I wish to inform you that the forbidden forest is forbidden – both during term time and otherwise. The only exception is when you actually live there, and I am delighted to say that this exception has actually come up this year as a result of one of our new students."

Harry was fairly sure he knew who Dumbledore meant, and the Headmaster went on. "To those of you who were here last year, I will pass on that the right-hand corridor on the third-floor is no longer out of bounds; I would however commend to you the school motto, which states that one should never tickle a sleeping dragon. It may be helpful. To those of you who were not here last year, I will note that if you see a dragon around the castle, please take note of what it is wearing."

That led to a rustle of conversation, and Professor Dumbledore elaborated. "If it is wearing a long yellow scarf, that is our school mascot who goes by the name of Nora. If it is wearing glasses and robes and is only perhaps three yards long, that is Mr. Potter. If neither of these is true, only then should you inform a teacher."

Dumbledore's list of notices went on a little longer, including making it clear that items which were forbidden were in fact forbidden, and he asked that all pupils please keep in mind any differences in physical ability when dealing with other students.

Then it came time for the school song, and Harry put his paws over his ears and his head under his wings.

It helped, a little.

* * *

Everyone made their way to their dorm rooms after the feast, and Harry was no exception – following the now-familiar route through the castle, odd as it was, that got them to the Gryffindor common room faster than just taking the grand staircase.

There was a brief interlude when Lord Ridley made a _very_ determined attempt to slay him, but Harry didn't really bother giving the ghost enough attention to make him think he was having an effect.

Then Percy gave the password – it was still Percy who did that, for some reason, even though he was now the _sixth_ year Prefect instead of the fifth year one – and Harry did his best to commit _Fortes Fortuna_ to memory, because he'd need to use it again tonight.

"At least we won't be at the top of the staircases this time," Ron said hopefully. "That _is_ how it works, right? We move down a floor?"

"Not at all, Ronald," Percy told him. "You stay on the same floor you're assigned in first year. That means the new first years will be on the first floor of the dorm room staircases."

"Oh, great..." Ron groaned. "That's not really fair, is it?"

"We could always ask Professor McGonagall if you could be moved up a floor," Percy suggested. "I think we've got a loft room."

Ron shook his head, and Harry wondered about whether he'd have to move into the loft room himself if he had a growth spurt or two.

The trip up the stairs took a minute or two, partly because of all the congestion and partly because everyone else was pretty tired; Harry was feeling like he'd be glad of his bed as well, as it had been a long time since he'd woken up, but first he unpacked his tent (using a spell to set it up, something he hadn't been able to do at home) and went in to snag the diary.

That done, he made his way back down the stairs – diary in one paw – and exited through the portrait hole.

* * *

Harry's route to Professor Dumbledore's office took him past Ravenclaw tower, and the entire House was still crowded outside.

Tanisis was sat on her haunches, head tilted a little, and as Harry arrived she licked her paw.

"What about this one?" she suggested. "Behind the first door is a raging fire, behind the second door is a group of vicious hit mages looking for something to kill, and behind the third door is a man-eating lion who hasn't eaten for three months. Which door is safest?"

"Why, the third door!" the knocker replied. "The lion's not eaten for three months, it's dead. Now, young lioness, can you tell me what it is that only an elephant can make?"

Tanisis hummed, taking her tail-brush in one paw and fiddling with it.

"A baby elephant," she said. "What word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?"

"Short," the doorknocker answered. "Hmm, what about..."

Harry kept going, wondering whether they'd reach a point where they'd have to stop – if only to let everyone into Ravenclaw tower.

He encountered the Bloody Baron, who inspected him before shaking his head and floating onwards, then reached the corridor where the entrance to Professor Dumbledore's office was found.

* * *

"Ah, Harry!" Dumbledore said, as Harry came into the room. "Excellent timing, I must say. I had just finished putting my dressing gown on."

The gown in question was quite a sight. It was covered in silver alchemical symbols which wriggled over the purple cloth, occasionally coming together to form an equation or other meaningful string of characters before drifting apart again. Harry said so, and the Headmaster smiled brightly at the compliment before taking a seat in one of the armchairs.

He indicated another to Harry, who took it, and Dumbledore then produced a bag from one of his pockets.

"Freddo?" he asked. "Of course, if you have already cleaned your teeth, I apologize for the temptation."

Harry said he'd be fine without one, and then took the book out from his robes.

"This is what I wanted to talk about, Sir," he explained. "I found it among the books I got at Diagon Alley during summer."

Dumbledore took it, and inspected it – opening it to the middle, at first, and seeing nothing but blank pages. An eyebrow rose as he flipped through it, forwards first, then back to the start.

When he reached the first page, he paused. "Ah, I see."

"I thought that if Tom Riddle had put his name on it then he had to have used it," Harry said. "And if there's nothing in the diary then that must be because he tried to hide it."

"Doubtless you are correct," Dumbledore agreed. "The year was one I remember well, though not for happy reasons."

Taking out his wand, he waved it once and then tapped the diary. There was a little flicker of red light, and the Headmaster's expression became troubled.

"Thank you for bringing this to me, Harry," he said. "You are correct that Tom has certainly written in this diary, though there is something else as well… I have a few ideas as to what it could be, and I fear that none of them are good."

The Professor fell silent for a long time, staring at the book, and Harry waited.

After perhaps four minutes just listening to the clock ticking, Harry glanced over at the phoenix – Fawkes, if he remembered correctly. "Is he awake?"

"No, I believe Fawkes is asleep," Dumbledore replied, and the flame-coloured bird chirped brightly. "You see? Deep in slumber. He often talks in his sleep."

He winked, and Harry chuckled.

"However," Dumbledore went on. "Mr. Potter. If this is what I fear it is, then I think it will become necessary for me to teach you a most remarkable spell. Not now, and not this year – at least I hope not – but some time you will have to learn it."

"What spell is that, Sir?" Harry asked, interested. "Is it the Patronus?"

"Not at all, the Patronus is a fine spell that I could wish more people knew," Dumbledore answered. "No, the spell I mean is called Fiendfyre. It is the most terrible kind of fire spell, hard to control and harder to stop… but it may be something you need in future, my boy. Though I dearly hope that this is simply the paranoia of an old man."

"Are you an old man, Sir?" Harry asked. "Don't you have a friend who's over six hundred years old?"

"Well remembered, Harry, well remembered indeed," Dumbledore smiled. "But wizards spend a lot of their time being old. It's really quite surprising how quickly we rush to become old, and how long we then spend enjoying it. Perhaps it is simply that it gives us an excuse to not bother to shave."

He waved his hand. "Now, I believe you should head back to get your sleep, before you begin your lessons tomorrow! Do take care to soak up as much knowledge as possible, you have had the whole summer to empty your head so it can be filled once more."

* * *

That night Harry had a strange dream, about the diary he'd handed in.

In the dream, Professor Quirrell was writing in the diary – using a quill to note down the schedule for his class. Monday, second year; Tuesday, third year; Wednesday, take over the world.

Then there was something about a horse that turned into a dragon, but honestly none of it was very clear.

* * *

In the morning, Harry stretched – getting the cricks out after the unusual experience of sleeping on a bed – and pulled his robes on before picking up _Heir to the Empire_. He went down the seven flights of steps to reach the Gryffindor Common Room, waved hello to the First-Years, and then had to politely tell them that, no, the way he was going to get to breakfast probably wouldn't work for them.

Leaving the portrait hole, he walked to the edge of the grand staircase and jumped.

Someone yelped back on the floor he'd left, and Harry dropped halfway to the ground floor before flaring his wings and coming down to a landing. It was just the way to make sure he was awake in the morning, and he furled his wings before heading in to get breakfast.

June was already there, inspecting some toast and prodding it dubiously with a fork, and she smiled briefly at Harry before returning to her examination of the bread products. Harry took a seat at the Gryffindor table, picking out some toast of his own, and buttered it up before adding some marmalade.

"Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said, getting his attention, and Harry paused long enough to take his schedule. It said that they had double Herbology this morning, then Transfiguration, and after lunch it was Defence.

Harry sort of wondered why it was _double_ Herbology now, between bites of his toast. Maybe it was because they were moving on to more complicated plants?

Amused by the idea of seventh-year Herbology being an entire day's time wrestling with Devil's Snare, Harry finished his toast and looked for something else to have. He picked up some scrambled egg, a sausage, and as he was adding some baked beans to the mix Dean came into the room.

"I forgot how many stairs this place had," he said, yawning. "What's first today?"

"Herbology," Harry told him, opening _Heir to the Empire_. "That's a double, then there's Transfiguration as well before lunch."

"Wow, so much for an easy Wednesday morning," Dean snorted. "When's Astronomy?"

"Um… midnight on Friday evening, I think," Harry replied, then checked his schedule again. "Yeah. That might be a problem if there's a club Saturday morning."

* * *

Their friends straggled in over the next ten minutes, Hermione with a gaggle of First-Years (or was the term pride, since they were Gryffindors?), and after they'd eaten they headed all the way back up to pick up their Herbology and Transfiguration books.

Then all the way back down again to the ground floor to head to the greenhouses.

It was something like forty flights of stairs, up or down, and Hermione was grumbling about it as they got to the greenhouses.

"What about if we had bags like Harry's tent?" Ron suggested. "You know, bigger on the inside. So you could carry all your stuff in one, and you wouldn't need to go back to the dorms."

"That's a good idea," Dean agreed. "We can't all be like Harry, and inexplicably tough and stuff."

"It seems pretty explicable to me," Neville volunteered. "He's a dragon."

"That's just a description, not an explanation," Hermione told him. "If you want to get technical, that is."

"I think it's an explanation," Harry said. "Dragons are just… kind of strong? I think it's biological."

He inspected his wing. "Or whatever it is you call it."

"Any idea how hard it is to make one of those bags I was talking about?" Ron asked. "It'd be great if we all had one."

"It would," Hermione agreed. "And, naturally, if you want one you'll have to make it yourself."

"Come _on_," Ron groaned. "Do I have to?"

"You made yourself some Erasing Quills," Hermione told him. "Eventually. So you should be able to do it."

"But..." Ron began, then groaned. "All right, all right..."

They crossed the lawn, going around the vegetable patch, and as they rounded the corner of one of the greenhouses they saw Professor Sprout with about half of the second-year Hufflepuffs. Parvati and Lavender were there as well, and Harry took a quick glance at Ron's watch to make sure they were still early.

"Good morning, chaps!" Professor Sprout said brightly. "We'll just wait for the rest of them to arrive – shouldn't be long."

"Ah, Professor Sprout!" came a voice, and Professor Lockhart strode over the vegetable patch to join them. "Just the person I wanted to see! I was wondering whether you were going to be discussing the Snargaluff today."

"That is sixth-year work, Professor Lockhart," Professor Sprout said, still cheerful. "I wouldn't give it to second-years, I fear it would probably wipe out half the class."

"Of course, of course!" Professor Lockhart laughed. "Half the class, maybe, but I'm sure Mr. Potter would get through unscathed!"

He winked at Harry. "But I was wondering if you'd perhaps consider using a little spell I picked up in Borneo – but, no, you know best, of course!"

Professor Sprout seemed a little less cheerful at that, but then someone yelped. "Dragon!"

"You mean Harry?" Hermione asked. "He's been your classmate for a year, Ernie-"

Professor Lockhart let out a quite spectacular shout of surprise, and then Harry was bowled over by a powerful impact that knocked him rolling once over completely and left him sprawling in the loamy soil of the vegetable patch.

A black-scaled, bronze-horned head as big as his torso loomed over him, teeth exposed and tongue rolling, and Harry blinked for a moment.

"Is that you, Nora?" he asked, noticing the long yellow scarf wound around the dragon's neck.

"Yes!" the dragon replied, and licked Harry from the base of his neck all the way up to his muzzle – knocking his glasses off, so Harry had to catch them with one paw. "Nora!"

She lifted her head back up a bit, visibly looking Harry up and down, and tilted it in bafflement. "Small now?"

"You can talk?" Harry asked, confused. "I didn't know dragons could talk."

"Harry, are you okay?" Neville asked.

Nora ignored him. "Talk!" she announced, sounding very pleased with herself.

"What's that hissing noise?" Ernie asked. "Is that dragon? I didn't know Harry spoke dragon."

"_I_ didn't know I spoke dragon," Harry replied, turning to look at the Hufflepuff. "I didn't know dragon was a thing that could be spoken."

He turned his attention back to Nora. "Can you let me get up, please?"

"Up?" Nora repeated, and try as he might Harry couldn't tell the difference between how she spoke and the sound of normal English. "Up!"

Her wings unfurled, and she took off to hover about five feet in the air. Harry rolled back to his feet, shaking some of the dirt off, and Nora gave him a plaintive look – the wind from her wings blowing fallen twigs and leaves away in gusts and making everyone else keep back.

"Fly?" she asked.

"Sorry," Harry replied. "I've got a lesson – er – how much do you understand?"

Nora seemed disappointed by the first word, and landed again. That let Harry see that she was now at least twenty-five feet long, and he wondered how she fit through the castle… then again, it _was_ full of secret passages, and she wasn't all that _wide_ as such. Just long.

"Understand?" she said. "Understand words!"

"Nora? Nora – there you are, you little rascal!"

Hagrid hurried over, and Nora turned to him to accept a scratch under the chin. "Sorry, Harry, she was goin' out for a fly, then she musta seen you and decided to come over. She's such a sweet normally-"

"Hagrid?" Harry interrupted. "Did you know Nora can talk?"

He frowned. "I mean, it's not English, but I can understand it, anyway..."

"Talk!" Nora agreed. "Talk lots!"

"Is that what that hissin' stuff is?" Hagrid said, sounding very interested indeed. "Aren't you a clever dragon?"

Nora seemed quite pleased by that description.

* * *

After the excitement of the dragon, Professor Sprout announced that they'd be in Greenhouse Three. Professor Lockhart seemed to have gone missing, which was a bit strange, and Harry followed the rest of the students as he brushed mud off his robes.

Maybe he'd have to swap to his other set after Herbology and leave those ones out for the House-Elves to wash.

Pondering that, he listened as Professor Sprout told everyone about the Mandrakes. She reminded everyone that the cry of an adult Mandrake could be fatal, but that a young Mandrake would just cause unconsciousness.

There were earmuffs laid out on all the tables, and Harry lifted himself up to a table with one forepaw before raising the other.

"Professor?" he asked. "What should I do? And does that apply to my sort of dragon?"

"Ah," Professor Sprout said, nodding. "Two very good questions, Mr. Potter."

She raised her wand. "If everyone else could put their earmuffs on, please?"

There was a general rustling as everyone else duly put their earmuffs on, and Professor Sprout checked to be sure everyone had indeed got their earmuffs in place. Once she had, she grasped the leaves of one of the Mandrakes before pulling it out of the soil.

Harry had sort of remembered that Mandrakes looked like that – like babies, for the young plants – but seeing it was something else entirely. The Mandrake wailed, squirming, and it was loud and vaguely painful for a second until Professor Sprout waved her wand at the Mandrake and it went silent.

After she'd re-potted the plant, she bustled over to inspect Harry and took her own earmuffs off. "Everything alright, Mr. Potter?"

Harry nodded slowly. "I think so, Professor. I had a bit of a headache, but it's going away now."

"Good, you should be fine," Professor Sprout said, and tapped her wand on the spare pair of earmuffs so they reformed themselves into a dragon-appropriate shape. "Resistant, but not enough to skip the earmuffs. Better to check with a youngster than a full-sized Mandrake."

She gestured to everyone else to take their earmuffs off, then went through the details of how to re-pot a Mandrake. Harry briefly tried the earmuffs on, making sure they blocked all the sound, then listened until Professor Sprout was done.

"Professor?" he asked, putting his paw up again. "How do you know when a Mandrake is fully grown?"

"Oh, they usually hold a party about two thirds of the way in," the Professor replied. "And before you ask, Mr. Potter, it's all instinct – and yes, we _have_ thought about that."

Harry was quite glad for the reassurance.

* * *

After almost two hours of re-potting plants, everyone went for a quick wash and change. Then it was down to Transfiguration, where they were starting right back in on transfiguring things with a beetles-to-buttons lesson. Professor McGonagall said that anyone who worked out the point of the lesson and told her would get four points, and after several minutes of trying to transfigure her beetle Sally-Anne Perks put her hand up.

"Is it so we get used to transfiguring things quickly?" she asked.

"Well done, Miss Perks," the Professor said. "Four points, as promised. Yes, this is an important aspect of Transfiguration."

She waved her wand twice, turning her glass of water into a bird and back. "When Transfiguring a moving object, you must keep in mind how long it will take to Transfigure – and where it is when the spell is cast."

That sounded interesting to Harry, and he wondered whether maybe that was why Animation was used so much in Transfiguration – as a way to get around that problem.

He managed to make one button, sort of, but it didn't have any holes in the middle and had a tendency to scuttle away when he wasn't looking. Hermione did much better, and Harry decided that he should do a bit of Transfiguration revision this evening as well as their proper homework.

It really was a pity that they couldn't practice over the summer. He knew it was the law, but it meant that you came straight back to school and you'd not done any magic for two months – certainly no Transfiguration, in his case.

Really, there should be some kind of footnote to the law where it was allowed so long as you were in a place where no Muggles could possibly see you. Or maybe so long as the only Muggles who could see you already knew about magic? That way Hermione could do magic at home, because her parents knew.

Thinking about that made Harry think about his tent, and his cloak, and the other magical items he had. Wouldn't it be just as much of a problem for a young wizard to use those as use his wand?

It was all very complicated, and Harry shrugged his wings before going to lunch.

* * *

Conversation was buzzing in the Great Hall during lunch. Apparently Professor Lockhart's first Defence lesson, with the first-year Gryffindors and Slytherins, had gone quite badly wrong – starting when he'd been asked by a Slytherin to give them a demonstration of a spell and accidentally picked up a liquorice wand instead.

It was kind of confused what had happened after that point, but it sounded like the Smith twins' pet fox had run rampant through the class, and that Professor Lockhart hadn't managed to catch her for more than twenty minutes of knocking things over and robe-biting and tripping.

The way Colin said it, there'd been absolute bedlam, and Professor Lockhart had eventually announced that they'd had an absolutely _marvellous_ lesson in how much chaos and disruption could result from something simple – pointing out that, while it was risky for the fox, doing that to someone else in a fight would be really very useful.

Harry kind of liked that point. It was a good point, and he wondered if that had been what Professor Lockhart had been planning on teaching for the whole lesson or just something he'd come up with as an improvisation.

* * *

Unsure quite what to expect, Harry and his friends went to their own first Defence lesson of the year.

Professor Lockhart was nowhere to be seen, at first, but swept in just before the bell with a flourish.

"Ah, another fine group of students!" he said, smiling winningly. "In case you don't know, my name is Gilderoy Lockhart."

He held up one of the books from Parvati's desk and winked, and the picture on the front cover winked as well.

"I don't really like being called Professor, it's really quite a boring title," he went on, putting it down again. "Unlike, say, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, or Order of Merlin, Third Class. Or five-times winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile award."

He demonstrated, and Harry wondered what the appeal was.

"Though I wouldn't recommend trying to drive off a dark creature by smiling at it," Lockhart cautioned. "It certainly didn't work on the Bandon Banshee!"

There were a few faint chuckles at that, and Lockhart continued apace. "I thought I'd just begin this class with a quick test – see how much you know so far, and how well you read your course books. If you could just hand those out for me, there's a good lad."

Terry Boot took them and passed them out, one per person. Harry got his and inspected it, finding that there were three pages in total, and had to do a bit of a double-take when he read the actual questions.

There were things like asking what Mr. Lockhart's favourite colour was, or what his ideal birthday present would be, or when he won his Order of Merlin. A few of the questions were about the actual subjects of the books, but it didn't seem like many of them were at all.

Frowning and wondering what the lesson here was, Harry started doing his best to answer them as soon as Mr. Lockhart told them to start.

A few minutes in, he absently opened one of the books to check something. Then he looked up at Mr. Lockhart to see if it was okay, and the teacher winked at him.

Harry assumed that that meant it was okay to look things up, and the sound of turning pages slowly got more common as more people followed his example.

* * *

"Well!" Mr. Lockhart said, marking the exams about half an hour later. "Mostly right, Mr. Potter, but you did forget about my favourite colour, which is lilac!"

Harry wondered whether Mr. Lockhart could have at least put some kind of index in his books. It was very hard to find what he wanted to find without one of those, and he'd done his best – and with over fifty questions in thirty minutes, he hadn't had time to look most things up anyway.

"It looks like Miss Granger is the only one to get everything," Mr. Lockhart added. "Very well done, Miss Granger, ten points to Gryffindor!"

Hermione seemed very pleased, and Mr. Lockhart brought a covered cage out from under the table.

"Be warned," he began. "In this classroom, you will face fiendish dark creatures and learn how to take on terrifying spells. There will be many terrible things… you may even see your worst fear within these halls."

Dean put his hand up.

"Mr. Thomas?" Mr. Lockhart asked.

"Does that mean you have a Boggart in there, sir?" he said, pointing at the cage.

"A good question!" Lockhart replied. "But no, not this time. What you will find within are..."

He pulled the cloth off. "Freshly caught Cornish pixies!"

The pixies jabbered wildly as the light hit them, and Harry leaned forwards a little to look closer.

He'd never seen a pixie before, and they looked very odd – like brilliant blue humans less than nine inches tall, without any wings but floating around anyway.

Seamus started to laugh.

"Yes?" Mr. Lockhart asked.

"Well… they're not really dangerous, are they?" Seamus asked, gesturing to the pixies.

"Well, Mr. Finnegan," the teacher replied. "Since you say so, I'm sure you can sort them out."

He opened the door of the cage.

* * *

Eleven minutes later, Dean finally got the freezing charm right and managed to immobilize the pixie that was still lifting Neville by his ear.

Harry caught his friend, and they all glanced warily around to be sure there weren't any more pixies still flitting around the room.

Several long seconds went by with no sign of a bright blue menace whizzing back and forth, and Harry let out a long sigh.

"It's so lucky you knew that spell, Hermione," he said, looking at the bedlam that the pixies had caused. Books torn – hopefully they'd be able to repair them or at least ask Percy for help – ink splashed, several small craters in the walls, pictures broken and glass everywhere from the smashed windows and the covers of the paintings. A portrait was complaining in a muffled voice that it had gone blind, though Harry thought it had just ended up facing straight down, and the cage was full of paralyzed pixies as Ron put the last one in and swung the cage door shut.

"There you go!" Mr. Lockhart said. "A fine lesson, I think, in why you should never claim something is simple when you cannot do it yourself!"

He smiled, though it was a bit less charismatic with his hair dripping with bright purple ink. "No need to clear up the rest, I'm sure the house-elves will be delighted to. No homework today, wouldn't be fair to give it to you with so many of your classmates having fled!"

* * *

"That doesn't sound like a very good way of teaching," Su Li said, as they headed upstairs – both Ravenclaw and Gryffindor dorms were the same direction, and Sue had stuck around to help them out.

"Maybe it's all about practical skills?" Neville suggested. "I do kind of wish we had Mr. Podmore back, though. He was cool."

There was general agreement, and then they all crowded to the side to let Tanisis Sanura lope past with Luna Lovegood following her.

"Sorry!" Luna called. "We lost track of time, Charms is in two minutes!"

"Probably telling riddles again," Su said, shaking her head. "Nobody else understands half of them – and this is _Ravenclaw_ we're talking about."

Overall, Harry thought, Hogwarts was certainly as strange as it had ever been.

* * *

AN:

* * *

And that's the first day of the new year handled.

Butterflies are flapping... a bit.


	22. Dragons Have Clubs

Ten minutes after getting up to the dorms, they all headed back down again to go out onto the lawns. It was still hours until dinner, and with comparatively little homework it made a lot of sense to go out and enjoy the late summer air while there was still a chance.

Fred and George came down as well, both with their broomsticks, and Harry had both the ones he'd got in Diagon Alley over the summer so that made a total of four. It wasn't quite enough for everyone to have one, but by taking turns it meant that five of the seven of them could be flying at the same time – and flying wasn't the only thing to do, since everyone was also still enjoying that they could cast spells again. Hermione had picked out at least a dozen spells she wanted to try out from their spellbook, and when it was their turn on the ground Ron and Neville went through most of the things from first year to get back into the swing of things.

Fred went off to the Quidditch sheds and brought back a Quaffle, which they began throwing around, and then George swooped up to fly alongside Harry as he went on a wide banking turn.

"Hey, Harry?" he asked. "Ever thought of playing Quidditch?"

"I've thought of playing Quidditch," Fred added, zooming over and flying on Harry's other side.

"You've thought of playing Quidditch?" George said. "I've thought of playing Quidditch!"

They exchanged a nod.

"We've thought of playing Quidditch," both said at the same time. "A lot!"

"And between you and me, Cormac's not actually very good at this seeker thing," George elaborated.

"It'd be a real help if someone like a second year-"

"-or unscouted third year, but who expects that," George interrupted.

"-thank you – could turn out to be actually very good at this seeker thing."

There was a long and expectant pause.

"No," Harry said eventually. "I've not thought of playing Quidditch."

The Twins sighed, sounding very disappointed.

"What's the problem?" he added. "Why are you so upset? I answered the only question you actually asked."

"He's got us there, George," said the one Harry had thought was Fred. But who he now thought was probably George.

"He _has_ got us there, Fred," Fred agreed, and Harry smirked a little.

It was hard to trick the Weasley Twins, and he was proud of having managed it even in such a little way.

"Let's ask another question," George decided. "Will you be coming to the Quidditch tryouts this Saturday?"

Harry thought about it, flying low over the Black Lake, and the two Weasleys flanked him as he did. Then he rose, wings cupping the air to push him higher and faster, and rose almost as high as the top of the castle before slowing and drifting back down to where the others were.

"All right," he decided, as he landed. "I'll see how good I am."

"Right!" said Fred. "The tryouts are this coming Saturday, they should go up on the noticeboard tomorrow."

"That's Quidditch, right?" Ron checked, and Harry nodded. "After last year… yeah, Harry's going to be really good at this."

"You sure?" Neville asked. "He might be no good at catching the Snitch, even if he can see it."

"He's caught you enough times," Ron responded. "Mind if I check I've got this jinx right?"

"Go ahead," Neville agreed.

"_Locomotor Mortis,"_ Ron incanted, and Neville's ankles slammed together. "But come on, Nev, at least let me have this."

"Have what?" Harry asked, fishing his own wand out from his robes and using it to dispel the jinx. "I thought you were saying _I'd_ be the one doing Quidditch."

"Well, it'd be cool if I could too," Ron said with a shrug. "But I'm not really very good – and my best position's Keeper, and I've heard about how fanatical Oliver Wood is."

Neville tried the Leg-Locker this time, and got it on the second try after the first fizzled. Harry reversed that, and tilted his head. "You still didn't say what it was you wanted to have."

"Oh, right," Ron realized. "Well… it'd be nice to have a team I'm supporting actually _win_."

"I thought you were okay with the Cannons always losing, Ron," Fred asked.

"I thought that was why he supported them," George shrugged.

"You have to admire their consistency," Fred said solemnly.

"Maybe that's why our brother likes them?" George asked. "He's a simple soul, and consistency is comforting."

"Oi!" Ron groaned. "Prats."

"Well, maybe it's just a problem with pattern recognition," Fred suggested.

* * *

Harry wondered about how many clubs he'd have time for, but just as important was going down to visit Hagrid for the first time that year.

The kindly man was sitting outside his hut, giving Nora a once-over with an intimidating wire brush to keep her scales free of anything that had built up, and when she saw Harry coming Nora perked up.

"Hello!" she said brightly, bouncing slightly, and Hagrid put a hand gently on the base of her neck to keep her still while he scrubbed.

"Was that still hissing?" Harry asked his friends.

"What?" Ron asked.

"It was dragon language, Ron," Hermione said. "He wasn't talking to you."

"I was," Harry protested, turning to look at them. "Or I thought I was."

"Well, it was definitely that sort of hissy dragon language," Dean said. "Thing. Whatever. Dragonish?"

"If it's a language it should really have a name for itself," Harry replied, turning back to look at Nora. "Do you know what it is we're speaking?"

The question made Nora tilt her head in deep thought.

"You know we only understood up until you said 'really have', right?" Neville checked. "You went back to Dragonish mid-word."

"Hold on a moment," Hermione asked, and got out a notebook.

"Speaking!" Nora announced, having apparently come to a conclusion.

"I know that's what we're doing," Harry said. "But, um…"

"Okay!" Hermione resumed. "Let's try a few experiments. Harry, say something in Dragonish."

"Something," Harry said, looking at her.

"No, I meant something in _Dragonish_," Hermione corrected. "You really don't know which language you're speaking?"

She made a note. "That's interesting… okay, now try saying the same thing, but look at Nora and say it in Dragonish."

Harry complied.

"Why Something?" Nora asked, then looked at Hagrid – who was watching the whole thing with a smile. "Done with scratches yet?"

"What did she say?" Hermione asked.

Harry looked at Hermione this time, to make sure he didn't repeat Nora in Dragonish. "She asked why I'd said the word Something, then asked if Hagrid was done with scratching her yet."

"I guess we're going to be sending another letter to Charlie," Ron guessed, as Hermione kept taking notes.

* * *

"Right!" Hermione said, some time later.

She checked the four pages of scattered notes she'd made, and Harry leaned over to look.

"Eat?" Nora asked.

"Sorry, no," Harry replied. "Ask Hagrid for something."

"Hagrid!" Nora agreed brightly, and turned towards the big giant. "Food?"

"So we've established that Harry can always understand Dragonish, but he can only speak it if he's looking at a dragon," Hermione said. "That doesn't include himself, though, and it also didn't include the dragon versions of his parents from the Mirror of Erised."

"Right," Dean agreed. "Which seems pretty much like magic to me."

"You can't just say something's like magic," Fred protested. "Magic has rules."

"Consistent ones," George agreed.

"Steady on, let's not go that far," Fred countered. "Mostly consistent."

"Then they're not rules, are they?" George said. "They're guidelines."

"You can't just say something's like magic," Fred resumed. "Magic has guidelines."

"But the guidelines are really odd," Dean pointed out.

"They're not, not really," Ron replied. "That fellytone thing, that's odd. You speak to someone a really long way away down a long wire and you _don't_ have to shout? How does that make any sense?"

"It's because the sound is converted into electrical signals," Hermione explained. "The signals go down the wire to the other end and get converted back into sound, but because they went all that way as electrical signals-"

She stopped. "Hold on. How is it that this is something that's hard for you to understand? Wizards have the Wizarding Wireless."

"Yeah, but that's magic," Ron replied promptly.

"I think we're getting a bit distracted?" Neville asked.

"Oh, right," Hermione realized, going back to her notes. "So, um… right. Harry's never met a dragon before, so maybe they can all speak Dragonish and Harry is just the first one who can also speak English to translate."

"That sounds like something we'd need Ron's brother to help with," Harry said, sitting on his haunches. "It'd be great if all dragons _could_ talk, though. Maybe there really are some hiding in Beauxbatons."

"What?" Fred asked, confused.

"Okay, seriously, George, you _need_ to read that book," Ron told him.

"We've also established," Hermione went on, "that it's possible to learn to speak Dragonish, or that a human _can_ make the noises you need to make. But it's very hard, because they're all hissy."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, remembering Ron's attempts – the hissing noises he'd made had been about half just gibberish, and the other half had resolved into almost random words until he'd finally got 'Hello' down twice in a row and they'd called that a success. "This would be a lot easier with a tape recorder."

"There's got to be some way wizards can record sound," Hermione said. "Right? Maybe that would help..."

She checked her notes again. "So the questions that we have left are, um… can Harry speak Dragonish if he's looking at a drawing of a dragon, or a photo of a dragon? Does the photo have to be moving? And – I know it sounds silly – can we confirm that other dragons actually speak Dragonish?"

Hagrid came over with a plate of rock cakes, and handed one to Harry (who crunched it down with pleasure). "And if you do end up teachin' folk how to speak dragon, I wouldn't say no to it. Bein' able to talk to Nora – properly talk, and understand her too – would be wunnerful."

* * *

Sometimes Harry wondered if the actual curriculum at Hogwarts was only half of what you were meant to be learning. The club sign-up sheets were going up, and Book Club sounded as interesting as ever – but he also put his name down for Quidditch tryouts, as Fred and George had asked, and some of the other clubs looked sort of tempting.

Maybe it was time management you were meant to learn?

Harry wondered what tips Percy could give for time management, because Percy had managed to get a staggering number of OWLs at once and somehow still keep up his Prefect duties.

But, then again, Harry couldn't think of any clubs that Percy took part in, so maybe that was part of how he'd managed to find the time. Shrugging, Harry headed upstairs to do his latest homework – and maybe finish reading _Heir to the Empire._

* * *

Aside from Herbology, where they'd moved on to more dangerous plants, and to Defence Against the Dark Arts – which had started with quite an unusual lesson – it seemed as though the rest of the classes were much the same as they had been in first year. Professor Snape's Potions lessons still involved carefully following the instructions on the board, Astronomy was about plotting the movements of the planets, History of Magic had moved on a little to a different subject, and Charms meant a whole collection of new spells to learn.

It was a little odd learning how to conjure fire, or at least _normal_ fire – the sort of fire that wizards conjured that was otherwise just like a normal fire and would set things on proper fire. Harry could do the same thing by breathing out, but he could see why most wizards needed to use a wand.

"Now, remember!" Professor Flitwick said. "The incantation is _incendio_, notice the stress on the second syllable! But more than that you must be careful, because the same spell can produce a _jet_ of flames or simply cause a flame to spring into being!"

He indicated the stone basins by their desks, each filled with flammable material, and then the set of candles. "And the flame can be really quite large or very small, depending on how you cast it – so I want you all to first simply try to cast the spell, as a jet or as an ignition does not matter but make _sure_ that you are casting it into the basin!"

Harry looked down, and moved his wand through the motion they'd been taught – a kind of wavy upstroke-and-downstroke which sort of traced the shape of a flame in the air.

"_Incendio_," he said, and the tinder burst merrily into flame.

"Oh, very good work, Mr. Potter!" Professor Flitwick announced. "Three points to Gryffindor!"

He chuckled. "Well, I suppose in a way you've been casting that spell a lot! It's actually quite similar to bluebell flames, Arithmantically speaking."

"It is?" Dean asked. "Um… _Incendio!"_

There was a _whoosh_ of flame, and bits of smoking tinder rained down all over the classroom.

"Ah," Professor Flitwick said, still cheerful as ever. "I think perhaps a little _less_ flame next time, Mr. Thomas!"

He extinguished the few embers that were smouldering, and lifted some of the spare tinder into Dean's basin with a quick levitation charm.

As he moved on to help one of the Ravenclaws, Harry looked at the scorched basin and then at Dean.

"Hey, at least I cast it," Dean shrugged. "Besides, you're fireproof. What are you worried about?"

"Most of my things aren't fireproof," Harry replied, inspecting his robes for embers. "And we don't learn flame-freezing charms until… what is it, third year? I think Percy said it was around that time."

Dean sniggered. "Yeah, because teaching everyone to set things on fire _before_ teaching them to put it out again _or_ the spell that means it doesn't hurt is a really good idea."

"Hey, I'm trying to concentrate," Mandy Brocklehurst asked, and Harry winced and apologized.

* * *

Saturday seemed to come unexpectedly quickly, which was a little odd given how it was a day of the week and those were very regular indeed, and Harry picked up his broomstick before making his way down to the Quidditch pitch for the Gryffindor tryouts.

His friends came with him, to offer moral support (or watch) and Hermione took out a small handkerchief before expanding it out into a big groundsheet to sit on.

"That's pretty impressive," Fred noted. "You don't learn that until later in the year."

Hermione blushed a little, then Harry saw her look over to the ground-floor entrance to the Quidditch pitch. "Ginny? Is that you?"

Ginny nodded from the door, looking a bit apprehensive, and Hermione patted the ground to invite her to sit down.

"Right!" Oliver Wood said – he was a big, burly boy in sixth year, and his eyes were bright with enthusiasm. "So it looks like we've only got one new possible player this year."

"Yeah, not that we need one," Cormac shrugged. He was the current Seeker, Harry remembered, and at his words Oliver shook his head.

"Harry couldn't try out last year, Cormac," he pointed out. "Unless Harry turns out to be completely rubbish you'll still both be on the team, because you're the reserve – and it really is good that you're competent in all the positions."

That didn't seem to mollify Cormac much, but Oliver lifted up a crate.

"You know the rules, of course?" he asked Harry.

"Mostly," Harry replied. "I know about the four balls, and about what each of the positions is meant to do."

"Good," Oliver said with a nod. "It's best to check. Fred and George will be giving you a bit of Bludger experience later, but for now the first thing to do is to let me see how you fly. Ready?"

Harry put his Cleansweep down, stepped over it, and commanded it to rise up – using a paw to hold it against his belly.

"All right, go," Oliver added, and Harry raised his wings before bringing them hammering down. He started the broom moving in the same moment, and took off with fairly impressive speed.

Control was a little trickier, at first, and it took him a few somewhat wobbly minutes before he was back into the groove of using his wings as giant fins to steer with most of his actual speed coming from the broom. Once he was back to it, though, he was able to flap again – little movements which kept his wings in place to steer, but which made him a little faster – and to turn around just as quickly as he could when he was flying with nothing but his wings.

It felt really good, even better than normal flying, and Harry lost track of time a bit.

* * *

When he slowed to a halt again, perhaps ten or twenty minutes later, Oliver waved at him to come down and land next to the crate.

Cormac looked a bit sour, but Fred, George and the three Gryffindor Chasers all looked pleased.

"Right!" Oliver said. "Next thing is checking you can catch – doesn't matter if you're Keeper, Chaser or Seeker, catching a ball is an important part of Quidditch."

He opened the crate, which had four Quidditch balls strapped into place – two of them fighting to get out – and reached past them to get out some smaller balls which Harry recognized as golf balls.

"Wait, wait, hold on," Dean asked, getting up. "Can I see those?"

He came closer, and Oliver passed him one.

"Yeah, that's what I thought it was," the Londoner said. "These are – do you play golf at Hogwarts?"

"What's golf?" Oliver asked. "These are intermediate Seeker practice balls."

"Mate, they're golf balls," Dean told him. "What else is in there?"

He helped Oliver balance the inner partition of the crate as he lifted it, revealing more balls inside – a half-dozen leather footballs, eight cricket balls, some tennis balls (half of them bright green-yellow and the other half all sorts of colours), and twenty or so marbles.

"Look at this!" Dean said. "Hermione, you're the other Muggleborn – come over and look at this!"

"I was Muggle raised," Harry volunteered. "And yeah, those are all for Muggle sports."

"Sure?" Oliver asked. "Those are high difficulty practice Quaffles, those are for Bludger practice, _those_ are Snitch practice and the little ones are high difficulty Snitch practice."

"...did Hogwarts used to have a normal set of sports?" Dean asked. "And the Quidditch teams just took everything?"

"Whatever, that's not important right now," Oliver said, shaking his head. "Okay, Harry, we'll do a few drills with the intermediate practice Snitches."

"Golf balls!" Dean insisted.

Apparently deciding to focus on testing Harry, Oliver rose into the air with a bag full of golf balls. Harry followed, enjoying how the broom let him just hover there, and once he was in place Oliver held up a golf ball – then threw it to the side.

Harry flapped his wings hard, for extra speed, and darted after it. It dropped quickly, and he snatched it out of the air with a paw before holding it up.

"That's good," Oliver said, approvingly. "Fred, George, grab some of the beginner practice balls – you know what to do. Ready for another one, Harry?"

Harry nodded, and this time Oliver threw the golf ball upwards.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Harry had managed to catch all the golf balls – though he'd had to dive quite fast for a couple, and in one case he'd nearly swallowed one. Oliver hadn't minded the tooth marks, though he did say he probably wasn't going to use that one in future.

"Okay, time for your next test," the Sixth-Year added. "Fred and George have used hover charms on some differently coloured practice Snitches all over the stadium."

"You mean tennis balls?" Harry checked.

"No, I mean practice Snitches," Oliver replied.

Harry privately decided that that meant yes.

"I'm going to call out a colour, and you have to race to it and bring it back here," Oliver explained. "Your job is partly to _find_ the hovering ball, because that's something a Seeker has to do."

"Hey, Captain?" Cormac called. "When are we getting to the competitive bit?"

"After this, Cormac," Oliver answered. "We'll do a few practice runs with the proper Snitch, then we'll give Harry some experience of facing Bludgers. Even if he's not the first-team Seeker he'll probably be reserve…"

Cormac seemed a little mollified by that, and Oliver raised his arm. "Ready, Harry?"

Harry nodded, tail twitching a little until he wrapped it around his Cleansweep just above the bristle bundle.

"All right… red!"

Harry darted upwards, looking around for a splash of red against the green grass of the pitch floor. There was a yellow one, a blue one, an orange one… a purple one – there!

It was back 'behind' him with how he was flying, not to mention only six feet above the floor, and Harry pulled up and around in a quick half-flip. That left him flying upside down, and he rolled into his dive before pumping his wings to go faster than the broom could carry him by itself.

Twenty feet off the ground he spread his wings as brakes instead, pulling the broom up to slow it down, and shed speed so quickly there was a very noticeable jolt. He grabbed the red tennis ball, slid to a halt, and turned around to fly back up to Oliver to hand the ball off.

"Good," Oliver said. "Now the blue-"

He didn't finish asking before Harry set off in the direction he remembered seeing the blue one.

* * *

As Harry tossed the last of the tennis balls to Oliver, he noticed that Cormac was looking a bit offended.

Wondering whether Cormac had become unmollified again (and deciding he liked the word mollify), Harry floated down slightly with his wings out to provide a larger sail area. That meant he rocked up and down slightly as the currents pulled him around, but it felt nice so he kept it up.

"Okay, so you're good at finding the Snitch," Oliver said. "How _did_ you do that, by the way? It took you several seconds to spot the first one, but after that you barely waited long enough to hear which one I wanted."

"I saw them before," Harry shrugged; it seemed pretty obvious. The shrug made him bob up and down because he'd used his wings to do it, and Oliver looked very considering about that.

"Well, let's see how you do with the actual Snitch," he said, tilting his broom forwards a little, and Harry followed as they drifted down to the crate.

"This is a Snitch that got used in the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw game last year," Oliver explained, taking a hold of it and then unbuckling it. "They have flesh memories which means they remember how they were first caught – in case it's needed to settle a rules enquiry – but nobody here was even in that game, let alone the Seeker."

"How do you know that?" Fred asked. "I could have been the Ravenclaw Seeker."

"You?" Oliver asked, snorting. "You know Ravenclaw has a new Seeker this year?"

"I don't see the problem," Fred told his team captain.

"Their old Seeker left, because _she_ graduated," Oliver added. "...you know what, never mind. Okay, Harry, so a Snitch is a bit different to what you've been catching so far."

Little spindly ball-jointed wings unfurled from the Snitch and began flapping, so far without any effect as Oliver held onto it, and he continued. "It's gold, obviously, which makes it a _little _easier to see at a distance. But because it flies by itself – and quickly, too – it can dodge, and if you take your eyes off it for a moment it'll vanish."

Harry nodded, watching the Snitch closely as Oliver held it up.

"In a game there's a ten second wait," Oliver went on. "But here we'll start easy. When I say go, go after the Snitch."

Crouching, Harry got ready for a quick takeoff. His wings rose slowly to their highest extension, his tail twitched back and forth slightly, and he kept his eyes on the golden Snitch.

"Don't eat it!" Ron reminded him.

Oliver let the Snitch go, then chopped his hand down. "Go!"

Harry took off with a combined jump and flap, powering off the ground, then steered straight for the moving spark of gold. His paw closed around it with smooth efficiency, and he flared his wings to come to a halt again.

Oliver blinked. "Okay… maybe a longer delay this time?"

"Try having him cover his eyes while it flies off!" Dean called.

* * *

About ten minutes later, Cormac was looking exceedingly disgruntled.

Harry had to admit that when he was going after the actual Golden Snitch it was just like everything clicked together. There was a shiny thing moving, he had to chase the shiny thing… he didn't even need to think about how he held his wings or controlled his broom, it all just fitted neatly together.

"All right, that's enough!" Oliver decided. "Unless something serious comes up, I think that means Harry's our starting Seeker this year-"

"Hey, what about that versus match you mentioned?" Cormac asked.

"He's got a point," Harry agreed, and wondered why Cormac gave him an odd look at that. "You did say."

"Well… Bludger practice first," Oliver said. "The Bludger's a ten inch ball of iron."

"Sorry, what?" Hermione demanded.

She got up from the enlarged handkerchief and came over. "What? This is a ten inch ball of iron_?_"

"Well, yeah," Oliver agreed. "Why?"

Hermione pointed at George. "And those two knock it about with a wooden club?"

"An _enchanted_ wooden club," George said. "And there's only one of me over here, the other one of me is over there."

Fred waved.

"Oh, you're almost interchangeable anyway," Hermione said a little crossly. "And – I must have read it in _Quidditch Through the Ages_ but I didn't realize – a ten inch ball of iron has to be – hold on."

She pulled a notebook and quill out of her pocket, and Harry noticed that all the actual Quidditch players were exchanging confused looks.

"I can't remember exactly how dense iron is, but it's at least seven times water – and that's twelve and a half centimetres in radius, call it twelve… so that's a thousand, seven hundred and twenty eight, times about four so call it seven thousand..."

Oliver tapped Harry on the wing shoulder. "Do you have any idea what she's doing?"

"Maths," Harry replied. "I think."

Hermione seemed to be satisfied with her numbers, and looked up from the page of scribbles she'd been using.

"You know those balls weigh about fifty kilos each, right? That's more than a hundred pounds!"

"I'm completely lost," Fred admitted. "What's that in Galleons?"

"I don't think it's that kind of pounds," George told him, in what was theoretically a quiet voice.

"Oh, right."

"How strong _are_ you two?" Hermione demanded.

"We're Beaters," Fred answered, as if that explained everything.

"Hermione!" Dean called. "Remember. It's magic."

That answer seemed to annoy Hermione, but she shook her head and took a deep breath before going back to sit down.

"So what kind of practice am I going to do with the Bludger?" Harry asked.

"Mostly making sure you know how to avoid it," Oliver replied. "Okay, here goes!"

* * *

Harry was not very good at avoiding the Bludger, it turned out, but on the plus side he took a direct hit to the side and it didn't do more than knock him sideways a little.

He discovered that, as far as the Twins were concerned, this made him "kind of tough".

* * *

Cormac insisted on the Seeker head-to-head, just to be sure, and then for some reason he was upset when Harry just pounced on the Snitch again.

Oliver seemed to be extremely happy, saying that Harry would break the losing streak Gryffindor had been on, and Harry watched as Fred and George exchanged glances before quietly taking their captain aside to remind him that Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup in the 1990-1 school year and that a streak normally meant more than one year.

After that slightly odd aside, Oliver told Harry what the practice schedule was. It was a bit dismaying to see it taking up three evenings a week – and his Saturday and Sunday mornings, as well – but Harry supposed it was because of the need to make sure that everyone could work well together as a team. (He wasn't sure exactly how you did Quidditch practice with only one team and one extra person, though.)

It did mean he probably wouldn't have time to try more of that AD&D game, though, which was a pity. Maybe he could do some over Christmas?

* * *

"Are you sure you're going to have time to do your homework?" Hermione asked, as they went back up to the castle. "That's a lot of free time doing Quidditch."

"Yeah, I know..." Harry agreed, sighing. "I might have to not head out to Fort William for new books. I'll see how I get on with the collection I picked up over the summer."

"That sounds like a pretty big sacrifice, Harry," Ron said. "I know how much you like reading."

Harry shrugged. "I'll see how it works out."

"Other sports don't take up that much time," Dean contributed, frowning. "Actually, I did that pick-up football game last year… maybe what we need is some clubs for other games too. We've certainly got most of the equipment for it, even if it is all labelled as Quidditch gear."

"Doesn't tennis need some bats?" Neville said. "I remember hearing that."

"Cricket and softball need bats," Dean corrected him. "Tennis needs rackets."

"Well… if they're Muggle sports, none of it needs magic, right?" Ginny asked. "If you got one to show Percy he could probably make you more with Transfiguration. I don't think Gamp's Law has an exception that says you can't transfigure sports equipment."

They thought about that as they approached the front door.

"Now I want to see how the Quidditch Beaters do playing cricket," Dean said.

"Actually, _I_ want to see that but with all the fielders on brooms," Hermione replied. "It could be very tactical."

"Just so long as you don't bring back Creaothceann," Ron asked. "I don't want to see most of Gryffindor wiped out."

That was an odd enough thing to say that everyone stopped and looked at him.

"What?" Ron asked. "It's a sport where you fly around with a cauldron strapped to your head and try to catch giant falling rocks. I _know_ which House would play it."

* * *

There were a few shuffled-around time slots for clubs, partly because of the Astronomy classes for the people involved meaning that they had to change it around a bit, and when the dust settled the book club was on Sunday evening.

Hermione, Harry and Neville all went there with their suggestions for the first book to read, and when they got there most of the familiar faces were still there. The sixth-year who'd facilitated the club last year was gone, and one of his housemates explained that it was because of NEWTs – but there were enough newcomers to make up for it, including both Tanisis (the sphinx) and her friend Luna.

Everyone wanted to talk to Tanisis, and Tanisis had Luna right next to her, so Harry only got a chance to quickly say hello to the two of them during the 'let's get to know each other' bit of the club. Apparently Luna knew Ginny – they'd grown up in the same village – and wondered whether Ginny would be willing to come along to the next book club, while Tanisis was doing her best to smile at everyone and not feel too overwhelmed.

She kept taking out her wand and looking at it, and Harry wondered how easy it was for her to use it with her paw. Were lion tails like hers prehensile enough to hold wands and point them the way he thought his was?

That and other questions kept him occupied until it was time to choose which book they should read first, and Harry suggested _The Hobbit_. To his surprise, it was the one that got picked first, which meant he didn't really have any more reading to do (though any excuse to re-read _The Hobbit_ was a good one).

* * *

After that, and somewhat to Harry's relief, his second year began to settle out into a routine.

Ginny did start coming to the book club to spend time with her friend Luna, there were several hours of Quidditch practice every week, and homework came rolling in from all their classes and rolling out again as Harry got through it.

The theoretical bits felt as hard as they had last year, but when Harry went back to check he found that they were actually quite a lot _harder_ than last year – so he thought about that a bit, then decided that it meant he was getting better (and that was a good thing).

The only really _odd_ thing was the Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. The homework was sensible enough, but Harry would have expected that the classroom lessons were practicals – and instead they turned out to be acting out bits from Professor Lockhart's books, usually bringing someone up from the class to perform the part of the dark creature or magical civilian (or Muggle civilian) that Mr. Lockhart was interacting with in that part of the book. It was _interesting_, because you got an idea of how Mr. Lockhart dealt with the situation, but they didn't seem to be learning much if anything in the way of actual magic.

Maybe that was next term?

* * *

AN:

* * *

It turns out that Quidditch actually takes up quite a lot of time in the schedule.

Also, Bludgers are actually really big and made of iron. Fred and George are really strong.


	23. Marauding Dragon

As September wore on, Harry was quite glad he was only doing one other club than Quidditch – juggling things around was quite tricky as it was, and his reading time was suffering. Some other people were doing several clubs, which sounded like the sort of thing Harry _could_ have done in first-year but he had trouble seeing how he could manage it this year with Quidditch.

Some of the clubs were things Harry didn't think he was ready for even if he'd had the free time, like Charms club or the Arithmancy Society, but then there was a newly-started music club which Ron had joined – apparently that was the work of June Forrester – and a cooking club which sounded like it would be really nice to be involved in.

Even if it was just as the taste-tester, though Harry was sure they had enough of those.

But, for all that, the Quidditch team was full of camaraderie and enthusiasm. Harry was often asked to help out in providing them a challenge, from an opposing Chaser for the three Gryffindor chasers to practice tackling, to a Bludger target (which was admittedly something only he could really do safely), to even being the opposing Keeper as they refined their whole-pitch formations.

Oliver was torn between gloating over Harry's ability to get the Snitch and worry over the Slytherin team – all of whom were equipped with high-level Nimbus brooms more modern than anything Gryffindor had. It seemed a little like an unfair advantage, but Harry wasn't really sure how the rules worked for that because Quidditch had been around for hundreds of years before brooms were even really sold.

It wasn't as if you could really buy better performance in a Muggle game like Football – or, at least, you could buy better _players_, but you couldn't buy boots that made you run twice as fast.

* * *

As Harry propped up his book and got ready for breakfast on the third Thursday of the month, Neville sat down next to him.

"Did you hear about what happened last night?" he asked.

"...not really?" Harry replied. "Did something bad happen?"

"Well, apparently someone set off some fireworks during the first-year Astronomy class," Neville explained. "All sorts of different colours – Percy said he was going to tell Fred and George off for it, but they're saying it wasn't them this time."

Harry thought about that.

"Actually, I wonder why there's only those two playing pranks," he said. "They're good, but they're only halfway through learning magic – there's got to be some seventh years who can do better than them."

"That is a good point," Neville agreed. "And, come to think of it, fireworks are one of those things you can just buy in a joke shop. Doctor Filibuster, I think?"

"I hope they're less dangerous than Muggle fireworks," Harry mused, then took a bite of his toast. He chewed thoughtfully before swallowing, and went on. "They're always full of warnings about keeping away from children and pets. They do smell kind of nice, though – one fell in the garden back at home, and it was pretty tasty as well. Kind of a salty taste."

Neville looked at him, then shook his head.

* * *

Colin gave Harry a bit more details over lunch. Apparently the fireworks had hissed off into the sky for almost an hour, each one sending out a burst of multicoloured sparks, but there'd been at least five minutes between them and they'd always been just as Professor Sinistra had told them all that they were about to move on to looking at something else.

It actually sounded like there'd been surprisingly little disruption, given that it was a series of fireworks exploding during an astronomy lesson at night. Harry was sort of impressed with himself that he'd slept through it, really, though apparently almost everyone had.

"Hope that doesn't happen in our Astronomy lesson," Ron said, cutting himself a slice of ham and a big hunk of cheese. "We're doing epicycles and stuff tonight. I kind of want to know why people thought they were a thing."

He snagged two thick slices of bread, buttered them, and put the ham and cheese inside – giving him a plus-sized cheese and ham sandwich.

"Isn't it just because we didn't know that the sun was the centre of the solar system?" Hermione asked. "It's an optical illusion."

"Yeah, but I want to know _why_ people didn't know," Ron replied, and pointed his wand at his sandwich. _"Hyacinthum inflammare."_

Bright lavender flames sprang up all around his meal, and half the Great Hall turned to look.

Ron noticed the attention. "What? Is something wrong?"

"Oh, brother, my bother," Fred began.

"Why have you set your food on fire?" George continued.

"Is this some kind of French thing?" Fred said.

"Would it be a problem if it was?" Hermione asked.

"We're British," Fred pointed out. (Or possibly it was George. Harry was just guessing.)

"My brother's right," George nodded. "Well, my _handsome_ brother is right."

"You mean me, then?" Ron asked.

"No, not at all," Fred informed his youngest brother. "He means _me_."

"And we're sort of not getting to the point," George said. "Why have you set your meal on fire?"

"It's bluebell flames," Ron replied. "They're not actually dangerous, and the fire doesn't spread."

He pointed his wand. _"Finite."_

The flames vanished, and Ron checked for a moment to be sure they were really gone before picking up the sandwich and taking a bite.

He chewed for a few seconds, just about all eyes on him, then swallowed.

"Delicious," he pronounced. "It melted the cheese, just like I expected."

"Oh, _right_," Dean realized. "I thought you'd gone a bit mental, to be honest."

"Is that the right way to say it?" Harry asked, distracted. "Wouldn't it be eccentric? Or bonkers?"

"With the best will in the world, I don't think we're rich enough to be eccentric," Fred admitted.

"We are mad, though," George frowned. "As in mad science."

"Mad magic, not mad science," Fred corrected. "Or perhaps Madic?"

George contemplated his twin for several seconds, then thwacked him with a rolled-up Quibbler.

"That was bad," he said. "And you should feel bad."

* * *

Harry noticed over the next couple of weeks that Nora had started watching as they did Quidditch practice.

Fortunately, she mostly seemed interested in watching, and there didn't seem to be any danger of her taking part – it just looked like she liked watching, and unlike Harry didn't seem inclined to go chasing after the Snitch the moment she saw it.

It was actually kind of nice to know she was interested.

Then, after one practice session, she came flying over as Harry left the pitch and landed in front of him.

"You..." she began, then paused and tilted her head.

"What is it?" Harry asked, and Nora shook her head in reaction.

"Not what," she denied, and was silent for several seconds – Harry could almost hear the gears turning as she tried to express what she was thinking.

Eventually, she tried something. "Back hurt?"

"No, I'm fine," Harry replied.

Nora accepted that, and took off again. Instead of flying towards either Hagrid's hut or to the castle, though, she headed on a bit of an angle – something which interested Harry, so he took off and followed her.

* * *

Harry had known there was a tree on the Hogwarts grounds that would bludgeon anything that got nearby – he'd wondered if maybe it was an Ent, but it was just a Whomping Willow – but he had to admit that he'd never thought of doing that with it.

Nora stretched like a cat next to the trunk, forepaws digging into the ground to stabilize her, and the branches of the mobile tree hammered down on her with a series of _thwack_s and _thump_s that sounded quite painful. They obviously weren't, though, and after she finished stretching the Norwegian Ridgeback lay down where the tree could reach her and continue to batter her all over.

Banking around well outside the tree's attack range, Harry alighted.

"Is that what you were asking about?" he said.

Nora brightened, lifting her head and twisting to look at him. "Hello! Back hurt?"

"No, I'm just curious," Harry explained.

Deciding that this would be a good thing to go into his next letter to Charlie Weasley, he checked the time and sat down to see how much longer Nora would spend being hit very hard with the branches of a mobile tree.

* * *

Several minutes later, Nora got up again. Her tail flicked out, slapping the side of the tree, and to Harry's surprise the Willow immediately froze – branches stopped in mid-swing.

"Am hungry now," she announced, and took off to fly over to Hagrid's hut.

As she left, Harry wondered if Neville knew that you could turn off a Whomping Willow by touching part of the trunk.

He'd know once Harry told him, obviously, but what he wasn't sure about was whether Neville _already_ knew.

* * *

On the first day of October (which was a Thursday), the Quibbler arrived at breakfast.

The cover was a drawing of Hogwarts castle, with a cat looking out the window, and the story it advertised was one called 'Humans At Hogwarts'.

Curious, Harry opened it up, and read a long article in which the author raised the chilling but sadly feasible possibility that Hogwarts had just admitted their first human student.

Harry got two paragraphs past that before stopping and re-reading it, just in case he'd missed something, but no – the Quibbler article suggested that _everybody_ at Hogwarts wasn't human.

It was a thoroughly odd article, and Harry seriously considered seeing if it made more sense to read it upside down. It wasn't the only strange article, either – another one reported that the Andorran Ministry of Magic had surprisingly turned out to be just one man, because the population of the little country was under 80,000 and so there weren't many wizards there.

That one sounded quite likely, to Harry, but he did wonder why it had taken so long to notice.

Then there was a two-page interview with an anonymous sphinx who was a Ravenclaw first year. Harry was fairly sure he could guess who that was, but the interview was very interesting anyway – for example, Tanisis (or Sphinxess, as the interview called her) said that her mother had become friends with her father because of a shared passion for running, before pointing out that sphinxes were well known for the riddle thing but that didn't mean that was the _only_ thing they were about.

Harry did wonder who the interviewer was, though.

* * *

"I wonder if wizards do any trick or treating?" Dean asked, when they were in the middle of doing History of Magic homework one evening. "I know it's still a few weeks before Halloween, but it seems like the kind of thing that they'd either not do any of at all or that they'd do loads of because they get to go outside looking like themselves."

"I don't think that's the technical term," Hermione sniffed.

"What?" Harry asked. "I never got to go trick or treating, but I've heard about it. It's definitely what it's called."

"That's not the one I mean," Hermione explained. "I mean 'they'. Dean, you're a wizard as well."

"Oh, yeah, but I was talking about wizard culture," Dean clarified. "And – hold on. You knew that, didn't you?"

Hermione explained that of course she did, she was just trying out this new thing called deadpan.

"Why don't we just ask Ron and Neville?" Harry suggested. "They grew up in wizard culture."

"Of course we do trick or treating," Ron agreed. "We only did it for a few years and only around Ottery St. Catchpole, but it was great fun. I think Ginny went with her friend, that Ravenclaw first year… Luna, that's right. I always dressed as a wizard, though a really old fashioned wizard and mum didn't let me take one of our brooms."

"That's neat," Dean said. "What about you, Nev?"

Neville looked a bit embarrassed. "Well… Gran didn't like me doing that. She said it was disrespectful to… actually, to your mum and dad, Harry."

"I don't mind," Harry replied. "It's kind of… it wouldn't be right if people couldn't have fun."

"I'm letting you tell Gran that," Neville said, and Harry snorted.

"I wonder if-" Dean began, then laughter broke out all around the common room.

Harry looked up, confused, and saw Fred and George coming in through the portrait hole.

Both of them had bright green hair.

"What in Merlin's name happened to you?" Percy asked. "Your hair's green!"

As he said it, both twins' hair turned yellow.

"Shut up, Perce," Fred grumbled, or possibly George grumbled. "Just tell us you can remove this spell."

"We can't," George agreed, or possibly Fred agreed. "It's got one of those fancy fixing effects on."

"The ones that mean you can't just finite," Fred said.

"It's very annoying."

Percy raised his wand. _"Egritudo."_

There was no change.

"Has that fixed my hair?" George asked, and the colour changed to purple.

"It's not fixed your hair," Fred answered.

This time it went blue.

"I'm casting a spell to see what's going on," Percy explained, following his brothers as they went over to a corner – the one not far from where Harry and his friends were. "It looks like this was a potion, actually."

"Of course," Fred realized. "We should have known those cookies were suspicious."

"In our defence, George," George said, "they _were_ in the kitchen."

"I think we've been pranked, by Jove," Fred concurred. "Anyone got a Bezoar?"

"It doesn't count as a poison," Percy told them. "So you'll just have to wait. It'll probably wear off overnight."

"Oh, come on, Perce," George groaned. "Can't you come up with some kind of spell to fix this?"

"Probably," Percy replied. "But I don't feel like it. Maybe I will in the morning."

"This is some kind of punishment, isn't it?" Fred asked.

"Mostly just a reminder not to eat random food," Percy told them. "What if you'd got something that they were making for Harry?"

"Good point," George conceded.

"Smugly made," Fred agreed.

"That actually reminds me of the sort of thing Mr. Lupin said the Marauders used to do," Harry said. "Does it really change colour every time someone says 'hair'?"

Both twins' hair changed to chartreuse, but neither of them noticed.

"Who's Mr. Lupin?" Fred asked.

"Where did you hear about the Marauders?" George added.

Harry blinked. "Huh? I met him last year, because of a letter he sent into the Daily Prophet. He said that he and my dad were friends at school, and they were part of a group of students called the Marauders who did pranks and stuff."

Fred and George discussed something in very fast whispers. It looked like they were saying the word 'hair' a lot, because in the space of about thirty increasingly awkward seconds their hair changed to midnight blue, chocolate, silver, cornflower blue, black, salmon, olive and finally ended up a deep violet.

"Okay, we need to talk about this," Fred said. "Come on, Harry."

"We're going to find a classroom," George agreed. "Hey, Perce, it's not curfew yet is it?"

"No, though I suspect that wouldn't stop you," Percy muttered.

* * *

A few minutes later, Fred and George had dragged Harry down to a sixth-floor classroom that looked like it had once been a Transfiguration class.

"All right," George began. "So let's talk about this."

"Who's this Mr. Lupin?" Fred added. "And who did he say the Marauders were?"

Harry frowned, thinking back to the conversation. "Well… I think he's the only Marauder who's really left. He said that there were four of them. He was one, and then there was Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black and my dad."

"Ouch," George winced.

"Yeah, we didn't expect that," Fred agreed.

After a pause which was kind of awkward, George coughed.

"So did he say which one he was?"

"Which one?" Harry repeated. "Well… there's some stuff I promised not to share unless it was _really_ important, but I guess the bit that doesn't really matter as much is that my Dad was an animagus – a stag."

Fred and George exchanged looks.

"That's good enough for me," George said.

"That's good enough for you?" Fred repeated. "I was going to say that!"

"That means you have to say something else, doesn't it?" George asked. "I think that's how it works."

"I don't," Fred countered. "That's good enough for me, Harry."

Harry tried not to snigger.

"The reason we ask," George went on, deciding to be the one who got on to the next bit, "is that we've heard the name Marauder before."

Fred took a folded up parchment from his pocket – it looked like it was about A-3 in size – and put it on the nearest desk. He put the tip of his wand on it, and cleared his throat.

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good," he announced.

Lines spread out on the parchment from the tip of Fred's wand, forming into dots and lines and eventually an entire map – a map of the whole castle, with little moving (or stationary) dots all over it and tiny writing next to them. There were a lot of secret passages on there as well, most of them ones Harry had never seen before woven through the castle like spaghetti, and he wondered how long Fred and George had had this.

At the top, it announced that

_Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs_

_Puvreyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers_

_are proud to present_

_THE MARAUDERS MAP_

Harry was quite proud of how quickly he worked out who was who – which, he thought, was probably because of all the Redwall he'd read.

"I think Moony must be Mr. Lupin," he said. "Wormtail is Peter Pettigrew, Padfoot is Sirius Black and Prongs is my dad."

"That's why it was good enough for us," Fred explained. "We know we hadn't told you about the Map, so you wouldn't know about something that would fit closely enough with Prongs."

Harry wondered what animal Mr. Lupin could turn into, to be Moony, then after a moment he realized what it probably was.

Poor Mr. Lupin. Being a werewolf was a lot less nice than being someone like Belgarion.

"So does that mean that Mr. Lupin and the others were animagi as well?" Fred asked.

"You know what that means, George?" George said.

"Yes, I do!" Fred agreed. "But where are we going to get the fur dye?"

"...what?" George asked, completely baffled.

"Oh, I thought you were doing that joke about having a strange idea," Fred explained. "Yes. Animagus. Right."

"I wonder if Mr. Lupin can help," Harry said, half to himself.

He picked up the map, looking at it and wondering how his dad and the other Marauders had made it. It couldn't be easy to do this sort of thing, to make a magical map of Hogwarts – making a normal map of Hogwarts was probably hard enough with all the odd passages! - and it looked an awful lot like those dots were actually people.

There was tiny writing next to each one, though Harry had to look quite closely to see them because the whole castle and all the floors and towers – as well as the grounds were crammed onto what was a large but not _huge_ sheet of parchment.

"How do you two read it?" he asked. "This is really tiny."

"Oh, you get used to it," Fred said.

"But there is a neat trick," George added.

He placed his wand on the map again, the tip resting on the sixth-floor classroom they were in, and made a sweeping upwards motion. The lines on the map got larger, some of it moving off the edge, and the sixth-floor map expanded until it was much easier to read.

"There's ways to make it do other things, too," George went on, dragging his wand down again to make the map change the scale the other way. "If you get close to a secret passage, it shows you how to open it – that's really useful."

"So that's how you know most of the secret passages in the school?" Harry asked.

"Most of the secret passages?" Fred said, offended.

"We know _all_ the secret passages," George agreed.

"I certainly can't think of any we don't know," Fred nodded.

"So!" George went on. "We might want to look at that map again in future, but really you should have it."

"Your dad helped make it," Fred agreed. "And since one of the other people who helped make it is dead, and another of them is evil, that means it's you or Mr. Moony."

"Which makes you the heir," George concluded, the hair of both twins going white.

Harry blinked, not expecting _that_. "Well… thanks, guys!"

He looked at the map. "I'm not really sure what I'll use it for, though..."

"Why not cause a bit of trouble?" George asked. "Or at least make sure you don't get _in_ trouble when you have to go out after curfew?"

Harry wasn't sure he'd ever have to do that, but it _was_ something that his dad had done.

Right now, though, the thing that was occupying more of his attention was the reminder that the Marauders had been animagi (or, in one case, something else).

What would his friends end up if _they_ became Animagi?

And could you become an Animagus while at school _legally?_

* * *

Mr. Lupin was quite glad to hear that Harry had run across the Marauders' Map, as he'd always wondered what had become of it after the caretaker Mr. Filch had confiscated it (apparently on general principle).

His letter also outlined the whole process for becoming an Animagus, but warned that it was extremely risky and that he thought it would be a very bad idea for Harry's friends to do it in second-year – along with a caution that the Weasley Twins (whose hair was now back to normal) would be better off waiting until their fifth year.

Harry showed that much to Ron, Hermione, Dean and Neville, who were all interested in the idea of becoming Animagi, but he kept the postscript to the letter to himself.

_I wondered if you would work out my problem. Thank you for promising to keep it secret._

_-Moony._

Harry did wonder what his Marauder name would be, though. It was normally what you were that wasn't human, so did that mean he'd be Smaug?

Probably not. It didn't sound silly enough.

* * *

Maybe Fred and George had hoped that giving Harry the Marauders' Map would make it so he'd spend time sneaking around and pulling pranks, but even if he'd been inclined to it felt like he wouldn't have had the time.

On top of his classwork, and homework – and Quidditch to boot – Harry also had to keep up with the books for the book club, and there was also the sort-of-hobby he'd developed of taking notes on what Nora was saying and doing. Nobody else spoke Dragonish, though Hagrid was doing his level best to at least pick up a few words, and what little information he could send off to Charlie Weasley was always greatly appreciated.

Hermione was helping out as well, torn between lamenting that this couldn't be considered a Care of Magical Creatures side project because they weren't doing the subject this year and fascinated by everything Harry could mention. She was even trying to sort something out with the British Dragon Reserve, to see if Harry could visit them and see if adult dragons were more eloquent than Nora was, but apparently she was having a lot of trouble working out how to schedule it.

There was also no sign of Dobby, which Harry could only view as positive – maybe the little house-elf had given up.

Certainly whatever plot Dobby was trying to keep him safe from hadn't turned up yet.

* * *

Halloween was on a Saturday, and that meant that Harry's morning was occupied once more by Quidditch practice. The weather was pretty bad, with the rain coming down in sheets, and after ten minutes Harry took his glasses off and put them in his robe pocket just so he wouldn't have drops of water in the way of his vision.

Practising in bad weather made it much harder for Harry to actually fly the way he was used to. Unlike everyone else, he had wings – which meant that he was blown a little off course by the force of a wind squall – and he had to concentrate hard to try and see the wind coming, or to adjust when he was blown off course anyway.

When it was his turn to team up with Cormac and be an attacking player for the whole rest of the Gryffindor team to defend against, it was trickier still – passing the Quaffle wasn't something he was used to, and the way the ball floated through the air which normally made it so a Chaser could catch it easily was a liability in bad weather. It was at least easy to see, bright red as it was, but more than once Harry ended up fumbling the catch anyway.

The combination meant he actually crashed at least twice, splattering mud all over his robes and scales, and when Oliver reluctantly called practice off Harry wanted nothing more than to have a wash.

At least he hadn't taken a book with him to the training session.

* * *

"Why are there no showers down near the castle entrance?" he asked Fred, as they climbed up the hill on which Hogwarts stood – Harry's wings out to give the others as much shelter from the rain as he could. "It seems like with Herbology, and Quidditch, and probably Care of Magical Creatures as well, half the reason why people would _need_ a shower is outdoors."

"I think it's because plumbing hadn't been invented when the castle was built," George replied, from under Harry's other wing.

"I'm… not sure that makes sense?" Harry asked. "If the problem is that they hadn't invented plumbing, then they could just have installed the showers wherever they wanted, couldn't they?"

"Ah, that's your mistake," Fred told Harry. "That sounds logical."

"But as your friend Hermione has been so kind as to tell us," George went on. "Wizards don't have much time for logic."

"I don't have much time for it myself," Fred agreed. "I mean, look how much it helps!"

"Wait, hold on, guys," Alicia asked.

"She speaks!" Fred announced. "I wondered why you were being so quiet!"

"I'm wondering why _all_ our teammates were being so quiet," George agreed. "Is there something wrong with joining in with a conversation?"

"We don't want to encourage you, that's what," Cormac contributed. "Plus, we want to get to having a shower."

"I'm curious, though," Alicia went on. "Didn't you just admit that logic _helps_? So why don't you use it?"

"Because that would be the logical thing to do," George explained.

Harry shook his head, smiling, and then they were inside the castle entrance.

Electing _not_ to shake himself off the way he'd seen Nora do, Harry wiped his paws – leaving more than a little mud on the mat. Oliver cast a spell to Vanish the mud once everyone else had done the same, and they headed up to the nearest set of bathrooms – or, for Alicia, Katie and Angelina, the _second_ nearest set of appropriate bathrooms, because the closest girl's bathroom was haunted and nobody wanted to be haunted during a shower.

* * *

Properly washed-up and changed out of his Quidditch armour (which Percy had Transfigured to fit a dragon; Harry wasn't sure there was much point given how durable his hide was but it was a nice thought), Harry finally got back to the corridor with the Fat Lady about half past twelve.

"Coriolanus," he said, and the Fat Lady's portrait clicked as she swung outwards. Before he went in, however, he paused – smelling something a bit odd.

"Going to be going in, dear?" the Fat Lady asked. "Don't leave me hanging, as the youth say."

"They do?" Harry replied, distracted. "I didn't know they did."

"Well, that Dean Thomas boy said it," the Fat Lady explained. "I thought I'd try and stay in touch."

Harry chuckled, then sniffed again.

It was definitely familiar, and he loped down the corridor and found a small orange vixen looking up at him in confusion.

"Hello, there," he smiled. "I think we met on the train?"

The vixen stared at him, then apparently decided he wasn't all _that_ threatening and licked a paw.

Wondering if she was sufficiently magical to see him as a dragon instead of a human, Harry thought about how he'd read you were supposed to treat animals.

"You're very lost, aren't you?" he said. "You should really be down with your humans in the Slytherin dorm room."

The vixen tilted her head, tail wagging slightly, and Harry slowly reached out to pick her up. She consented to it, and Harry juggled her about a bit so she was held in one paw and he could use the other three to walk on.

"I'll see if one of the Prefects can take you down to your common room," he said, still trying to sound non-threatening.

Maybe he should have a quick word with the Smith twins, though. And Neville, for that matter – one pet going missing was a problem, but a fox and a toad _both_ going missing was just asking for a tragic Owl home.

* * *

Once that was sorted out, Harry had some homework to do. Dean hadn't done it yet, so the two of them spent some of the Halloween afternoon working on the only somewhat spooky subject of Potions, though they were interrupted for a bit when Neville asked for advice on how to make sure his arms were strong enough to swing a sword.

That one was a bit of a puzzler for Harry as well, but after a bit of thought Harry suggested that he should start with moving a weight around and use heavier weights over time. It was mostly a guess, but he was fairly sure it was a good one.

It was actually kind of odd how little the books he'd read actually talked about sword fighting. Belgarion – back when he'd been just Garion – had got a sword for a present, and then just been… quite good at sword fighting. Maybe it was magic, but then it should be magic here as well.

Then again, maybe he should just suggest Neville do some training as a spare Beater. Fred and George were clearly very strong.

Potions called, though, and Harry went back to that (along with Dean, who put away the book he'd been reading while he waited). There was a foot or so left on their essay about the usefulness of tap water, salt water, groundwater and lake water as the base for a potion, and with all the looking-things-up they had to do it took quite a long time.

* * *

Putting down his ink-erasing quill, Harry sighed.

"I think that's done," he said, shutting the Potions textbook and the extra book they'd got out of the library. "And just in time, too, there's not long left until the Halloween feast starts."

"You going to dress up?" Dean asked.

"Well..." Harry began, about to say no, then shook his head. "I'm going to dress up as a dragon."

"But you are a dragon," Dean replied, sniggering.

"Yeah, it's a really good costume," Harry explained, warming to the topic. "I've been in one all this time. Really convincing, isn't it?"

He leaned closer. "Don't tell anyone, but I'm actually a dwarf."

Dean tried manfully to keep a straight face.

"You guys coming?" Ron asked. "We're heading down soon."

"Bit early, isn't it?" Dean replied, glancing at the clock.

"Do you want to be part of hundreds and hundreds of students trying to get through the corridors?" Ron said.

"I'd say I'd fly," Harry noted, looking at the window and the rain drumming against it. "But… yeah."

"Hey, take a book if you want," Ron shrugged. "Pity the Quibbler doesn't come until tomorrow. I'd kind of love to see what the Halloween edition is like."

"You could ask Luna," Ginny volunteered, looking up from _The Two Towers_. "Her dad's the one who runs it. I think he writes all the articles."

"You what?" Ron asked, blinking. "Some of those articles contradict each other."

"That sounds like a pretty normal tabloid to me," Hermione said, joining in the conversation. "Now, are we going down now or are we going to spend some time in the library first?"

* * *

Once the students had stopped arriving, the Great Hall was packed. There was a slightly different feel than last year, with the floating candles burning in appropriately spooky colours like green and blue; Harry wondered if it was a bit Ravenclaw or Slytherin, but he supposed that some of them were burning blood-red and others were burning deep black, so when you thought about it all four Houses _were_ represented.

It looked like almost everyone was here. Tanisis was easy enough to spot, and June stood out almost as much, but when Harry tried looking he actually could see just about everyone he tried to find – Cedric Diggory, Draco, Marcus Flint, Penelope… even Nora was in the room, curled up on a giant cushion behind the High Table with her tail flicking slightly as she snoozed.

The only people who seemed to be missing were the Smith twins from Slytherin, and Harry wondered if that was just because they wanted to make sure their pet vixen didn't escape again.

"Attention, everyone!" Professor Dumbledore said, standing. "Before we begin the Halloween Feast, I would like to say a few words. Does anybody mind?"

After a slightly awkward pause of about ten to fifteen seconds, he nodded. "Thank you. I thought it was the right time to say something about the _true_ meaning of Halloween."

He cleared his throat. "Boo."

With that, the feast appeared.

"I can never really tell if he's actually crazy or just acting like it," Dean said, as he sliced some Pumpkin Pie to put on his plate.

"I'm not sure it has to be just one or the other," Neville replied.

* * *

The Halloween Feast had been loud and fun last year, and this year it was just as much fun – made all the sweeter by the drumming rain on the roof, and the warmth of the Great Hall. Everyone knew that there was filthy weather going on outside and they were well out of it, and the House-Elves had outdone themselves.

Some of the odder things that made their way to the tables included Saumon a la Rothschild (which was restricted to the upperclassmen, as it contained alcohol – watching it vanish as Fred tried to cut himself some gave half the Gryffindor table the giggles) as well as breads baked with things like mushrooms and cheese included in the loaf. Harry quite liked that, and the chasseur chicken, and the Chicken-and-Egg Fricassée, but one thing he wasn't sure about was the fried haunch of zebra.

In fact, everyone was a bit iffy about that one, except for the two obligate carnivores at the feast. June came over to get a plateful, carefully using a levitation spell to move her plate, and Tanisis asked permission before moving the whole rest of the haunch over to Ravenclaw.

* * *

As the puddings were coming out, Harry happened to notice as Tyler (or was it Taira? He still didn't know) snuck around the side of the hall before getting Professor Snape's attention.

Trying not to stare, but still curious, Harry watched as the Slytherin head of house listened for a long moment before getting up. The two of them left through the staff entrance at the back of the Great Hall, and Harry wondered what was going on.

Hopefully it didn't revolve around a pet.

* * *

"I wonder how the House-Elves decide what to make," Hermione said, inspecting the chocolate pumpkin. "There's so many of them, they must have hundreds or thousands of years of experience between them."

"Well, yeah," Ron agreed. "That's why it's so good."

He indicated the pumpkin with his fork. "Are you going to have all of that, or should we share?"

"...Ron," Hermione began. "This is bigger than my head."

"So that's a no?" Ron asked.

"Of course I'm all right sharing it," Hermione sighed. "It'll probably take all of us to make a good start on it."

She cut into it with her knife, sawing back and forth to cut it more easily, and revealed that beneath the thick outer shell of chocolate it was filled with alternating layers of brownie and sponge cake stuck together with caramel.

"I'm pretty sure that would be the kind of thing a really posh family would show off at a party," Dean said, as Hermione cut herself a slice before starting on one for Ron. "And I mean, _really_ posh. Like, lords and stuff."

Ron's slice was done, and Hermione moved it over to his plate. He cut a bit off with his spoon and took a nibble, then frowned and looked down at it.

"Something wrong?" Neville asked.

"Not really," Ron replied, loading up his spoon again. "I'm just surprised they managed to get the brownie to taste of lemons as well as chocolate."

"Sounds nice," Harry said, wondering if you could use magic to _arrange_ food.

Sure, you couldn't use it to conjure or transfigure food – unless you had some and used magic to make it so you had more than you started with – but would you be able to make a brownie and a sponge cake, and some chocolate, then magically arrange them into the pumpkin shape?

Would you be able to make it in another shape?

"Oh, wow," Neville said, now with a slice of his own. "You're right, that's really impressive."

"Want me to take over, Hermione?" Harry offered. "It looks like that's hard to cut."

"Thanks," Hermione agreed, relinquishing the knife gratefully.

Harry adjusted his grip a little, then sawed down into the pumpkin. His cut was a bit more wobbly than Hermione had managed, but it was also much faster – little curls of hardened chocolate left behind by his knife as he sliced downwards.

"Anyone else want a piece?" he asked.

As it turned out, quite a lot of people did.

* * *

A few minutes later, Harry had finished cutting, and was about to start eating when there was a loud _ting_ sound – sort of like a bell – that resonated throughout the hall.

The hubbub of conversation died away, and everyone looked up to the top table.

"Thank you," Professor Dumbledore said, putting down a crystal goblet and returning his wand to wherever it was he kept it. "Regrettably, I am afraid that I will have to miss the rest of the meal because of one of my many duties. As this is such a dreadful shame, I recommend to all of the students here at Hogwarts that you do your best to end up with no more than two jobs."

He smiled brightly at everyone in the Great Hall. "If any further announcements have to be made, I am sure that our school mascot will do a wonderful job."

"Mascot!" Nora agreed, though Harry was aware he was the only one who understood what she'd said in the first place.

"Don't let me keep you from your food," Dumbledore added. "I recommend having a hot drink with your pudding, it really does make the experience much nicer."

Professor Flitwick tapped Professor Dumbledore on the wrist, and the tall man bent down to hear what his colleague had to say.

"Ah," he went on. "Professor Flitwick has just reminded me that there have not yet been any hot drinks provided. Just wait a minute, and I'm sure they will be."

Professor Snape was standing by the door of the staff entrance, looking vaguely disapproving of how long the Headmaster was taking. That made Harry wonder if it was something to do with Tom Riddle, or maybe a Slytherin house thing…

Dumbledore finally left, with a cheerful wave, and Harry decided that until he knew more that was no reason not to have pudding.

He spotted a plate of cream horns nearby, and snagged it so he could have one and offer them around to everyone sitting close to him. It wasn't quite the same as having some cream with the cake, maybe, but it was nice to have to combine the taste – and the same was true of the hot chocolate, which appeared about a minute later.

* * *

By the time they headed up to bed, not far from midnight, Harry was pleasantly full of all sorts of food and more than a little drowsy.

Professor Dumbledore hadn't come back in, but in a way that was good news – if there'd been a serious problem he was sure that the Professor would have come in and told everyone what was going on. Instead, it had been a normal Halloween feast… albeit one where it seemed like someone had given the House-Elves several recipe books and told them to come up with whatever they could think of.

"More exercise tomorrow," Neville said, mostly to himself, as they trudged up the last few stairs. "Or maybe the day after."

"No kidding," Seamus agreed. "Did you guys try the chocolate cobbler?"

"I was too full," Ron replied. "Full of pastry and chocolate."

"That's okay, chocolate cobbler's both..."

"I'm surprised they didn't make, I don't know… molten metal maltloaf for Harry or something," Dean said, then yawned.

"I think that'd be difficult to bake," Ron said, thinking. "Can't really get the oven hot enough. And if you do you might melt the oven… maybe you'd need to use magic."

Harry stayed awake long enough to clean his teeth, then curled up on the pile of letters on his bed and went to sleep in minutes.

Halloween was a nice part of the year, but he always seemed to eat too much.

* * *

AN:

* * *

I have surprising amounts of fun writing Wizarding food.


	24. An Unexpected Dogfather

Perhaps because of how much he'd eaten, or just because of the fact it was Sunday, Harry slept later than normal.

When he finally did wake up, the sun was already up, and Ron was digging through the sheets on his bed.

"Huh?" Harry asked, rolling over, and fell off the bed. There was a _thump_, one of his wings stuck up for a bit before he reeled it back in, and he snagged his glasses off the bedside table and put them on before looking around.

"Harry, good," Ron said. "Um… can you quickly check, you didn't land on Scabbers or anything?"

Harry checked, but he didn't find any squashed rat beside him or underneath him or anything like that.

"Is he missing?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, I can't find him," Ron replied. "I didn't see him last night, but I was way too tired to check."

"I don't blame you," Harry admitted. "Okay, hold on."

He took a deep sniff, then blinked.

"Huh, that's odd."

"What's odd?" Ron asked anxiously. "Can you smell him?"

"Well, yeah, but not all that recent? I think?" Harry replied. "I'm not _great_ at tracking things, but I can usually track Trevor… but I can smell something else, as well. Sort of like fox."

"What!?" Ron demanded. "You mean like that pet fox the Slytherins have?"

"Yeah, that's the one," Harry agreed. "But it's all over the place, and I _know_ she only came into Gryffindor tower for a few minutes yesterday – I handed her straight over to Percy and he took her down to Slytherin."

"Then someone must have let her back in," Ron guessed. "But… hold on, all the Gryffindors were at the Halloween feast, weren't they?"

"Yeah, that's what's weird about it," Harry agreed. "And I can smell the _Smiths_ as well. I think."

He shook his head. "I can't tell if its just smelling them on her, or what… and I can't smell any blood, either, so if the vixen went after Scabbers he got away."

Ron seemed to find that a bit comforting. He was about to say something else, but Neville came running up the stairs and burst into the dorm room.

"Guys," he said, panting a little. "I just got the Daily Prophet."

"Did you see Scabbers?" Ron asked.

"What?" Neville said, thrown. "Why would Scabbers be in the Daily Prophet?"

"I don't know," Ron admitted. "But I asked you to-"

"Never mind that!" Neville insisted. "Look!"

He put the paper down on his bed, and Harry and Ron crowded around to read the front page.

_SIRIUS BLACK MOSTLY INNOCENT?_

There was a big photograph of Sirius Black, who Harry had seen in a photo or two before, but this time he looked deeply befuddled.

"Isn't he – but – how can he be innocent?" Ron demanded. "Didn't he betray Harry's parents or something?"

"It says mostly innocent," Harry replied. "So… did he betray Mum and Dad only a little bit?"

After thinking about that for a moment, he shook his head. "No, that doesn't make any sense…"

Deciding there was no other way to find out what was going on, he started to read the article.

"Long-time inmate of Azkaban and the head of the notorious Black Family, Sirius Black was once thought to be the most devious henchman of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," he read. "But events last night at the Ministry of Magic cast doubt on what we all thought."

He paused. "Isn't Black kind of an ominous name, now I think about it? I know it's a Muggle surname as well, but..."

"Is it a Muggle surname as well?" Ron asked.

Harry nodded, but most of his attention was on the article as he read through.

"He didn't get a trial?" the young dragon asked. "Wow."

"Well, everyone thought he was guilty, I guess," Ron replied. "It's not like anyone else could have betrayed the Potters if there was a Fidelius charm going on… wait, hold on, _how_ could anyone else have betrayed your parents? Or was he guilty of that?"

"I'm still reading," Harry answered. "It says that..."

He stopped.

"It says what?" Ron asked.

"It says Peter Pettigrew got brought into the Ministry last night by Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape," Harry told them. "And he had a Dark Mark on his arm, and they used truth potion and he confessed to being the one who betrayed my parents."

Harry sat back, automatically twisting his tail around to act as a rest. "I mean, um… wow?"

"How did they find him?" Ron asked. "That's what I want to know."

Hermione came running up. "Have you seen the – you have!"

"Yeah, I'm still trying to get my head around it," Harry admitted.

"I know!" Hermione agreed. "I couldn't believe that Pettigrew was an illegal rat animagus who was hiding at Hogwarts for the last several years."

There was a short pause.

"What?" Ron asked. "Did you say he was a rat animagus?"

"Well, yes," Hermione replied. "There's a picture on page two, or rather, two pictures. One of Peter Pettigrew in human form and one in rat form."

Ron picked up Neville's copy of the paper and turned it to the next page.

"...well," Neville said, after a long moment. "It looks like Scabbers _is_ in the paper."

* * *

The way Harry felt for the next half hour or so was something he couldn't really put words to.

Firstly, he was feeling a lot like he did when he wanted to test out how well he could fly, so he powered up to the level of the clouds and then just stopped flapping or gliding – tumbling through the air in freefall.

Hopefully the analogy didn't go any further than that, though, because when he'd started doing that at age eight or so it had taken him a few tries to get used to how to recover again. There had been some oddly shaped dents in a meadow not far from Little Whingeing for a year or so after that, until he'd finally got used to it properly.

Secondly, there was how Scabbers had actually been Peter Pettigrew, which was enough to wrap his head around to begin with.

Thirdly there was how apparently Mr. Barty Crouch was in really big trouble for not giving Sirius Black a trial. The Minister for Magic had only had time to give a quick statement, but he said he was shocked by the lack of care shown by the previous administration.

Then there was that Sirius Black had confessed to something _else_ to what he'd been in Azkaban for. Apparently Professor Dumbledore (in his role as Chief Warlock, or Supreme Mugwump, or possibly Grand Sorceror) had visited Azkaban prison, and then Mr. Black had confessed to being an illegal animagus, to having recklessly endangered a fellow student at Hogwarts during his time there, half-a-dozen minor crimes, and to being 'ruggedly handsome' and 'deeply hilarious'.

The writer of the article thought it was quite likely that he'd go free based on time served.

* * *

About half past eleven in the morning, Harry and his friends were sitting around a table in the common room.

"Going down to lunch is going to be really odd," Ron said.

"Yeah, that is a good point," Dean agreed. "For both of you, too."

He shook his head. "Mum's not going to believe this."

"_My_ mum's going to be really cross," Ron groaned.

He brightened a bit. "Though I guess Scabbers was originally Percy's pet, so maybe she'll be cross at him too?"

"I don't think your mum's going to be cross at any of you," Harry reassured him. "Peter was able to hide for years from Professor Dumbledore."

"Yeah, that is a good point," Ron admitted.

He went silent for a long moment.

"Any ideas what would be a good pet?" he said.

"Toads are nice," Neville tried.

"I don't think so," Ron denied. "Not if they're all escape artists like Trevor."

"Surely not _all_ toads are like that," Hermione said. "That sounds very unlikely."

Harry tilted his head a little. "Have you ever seen a toad that isn't an escape artist?"

"They're the easiest kind to see," Ron snorted. "On account of how they're… you know, not escaped."

Hermione looked troubled. "I actually don't think I've ever seen a toad that isn't Trevor."

"There you go," Ron said. "So not a toad, then. What's the other things we're allowed?"

"Based on what I've seen..." Harry frowned. "Cats, owls, foxes, tarantulas. And you could probably have another rat, as long as it's actually a rat."

"No way," Ron insisted. "I'm not having another rat."

"An owl, then?" Hermione suggested. "Or a cat. They both eat rats."

"...owls eat rats?" Ron asked. "Blimey. Now I'm surprised Scab – um, _Pettigrew_ lasted that long."

Harry was about to ask how Ron hadn't known that, but then Hedwig flew into the common room just ahead of Katie Bell.

"Whoa!" someone said, startled, and the snowy owl alighted on Harry's arm.

"Hey, Hedwig," Harry said, giving her a quick stroke. She clucked her beak, then dropped a small envelope in front of him.

"Sorry I don't have any bacon or anything," Harry added. "I'm guessing you couldn't deliver at breakfast because I didn't have any?"

Hedwig indicated with a little head bob that that was the case.

"That is one seriously smart bird," Dean said. "They've all got to be pretty smart to take letters, but waiting outside until someone opens the portrait door is really neat."

"Yeah, she was the only one who didn't freak out when I went into the shop," Harry agreed, opening the letter with one paw and a tail to hold it in place.

Inside was a note, which asked Harry to come and visit Professor Dumbledore in his office at any time between ten and eleven, two and three, or five and six, and giving the current password (which was 'marchpane').

Harry sort of had an idea what that was going to be about.

* * *

Once he'd let Hedwig out the window, Harry went down to lunch.

It seemed like everyone wanted to talk to him, and find out what he thought, and all Harry could really say was to give the answers to the most common questions.

No, he hadn't known Peter Pettigrew was alive or at Hogwarts.

Yes, he'd thought Sirius Black was guilty.

Yes, he didn't like Peter Pettigrew now he knew who was really at fault.

No, he hadn't been the one to catch Peter Pettigrew.

Luna Lovegood from Ravenclaw asked him whether this meant he had a Dogfather now, which made him laugh (and realize how much he'd needed it), while Draco said something about Harry being lucky that Peter Pettigrew had been so much of a coward.

Harry had replied that he wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not that Peter Pettigrew was a coward, because if he was the one who was had betrayed his family then it might be because of that. He didn't know enough to be sure, though, or even to know if Peter Pettigrew actually was a coward, and after he'd said all that Draco had looked puzzled for a minute or so before just walking away.

* * *

Harry was unable to concentrate on homework, so it was just as well he didn't have any.

Neville did, an extra-credit essay for Herbology, and Harry did his best to help his friend by looking things up. He wasn't sure how much help he was, though, and shortly before two in the afternoon he left Gryffindor to go to the Headmaster's office.

* * *

Harry was still wondering exactly what marchpane was as he entered the office, and found that Dumbledore was nowhere to be seen.

"Professor?" he asked, a little confused, and then the fire flared up green and Dumbledore came through.

"Ah, Harry," he said. "Either I'm a touch late or you're slightly early."

"I think I'm probably early, Sir," Harry replied. "I didn't want to be late."

"That makes perfect sense," Dumbledore agreed. "I did not want to be early, so it seems we have both got what we were after. Please, take a seat."

Harry did so, and Professor Dumbledore came around to sit opposite him in one of the other chairs.

For about ten seconds, there was silence.

"The first thing I want to say to you, Harry," Dumbledore began, "is sorry. I realize it is quite a short word, and so often has to bear so much weight, but I would not be able to forgive myself if I had not said it."

"Sorry, sir?" Harry repeated. "I… don't think I properly understand."

"Ah, the innocence of youth," Dumbledore said. "Harry, I am the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, and I was a friend of both your father and of Sirius Black – and, I thought, of Peter Pettigrew. Sirius Black has been dreadfully wronged."

He let out a sigh. "Harry, would you be willing to hear the explanation as to why I made such a terrible mistake?"

"Of course, Sir," Harry agreed. "I really don't understand most of what happened, I'm afraid. The newspaper said a lot about it, but I don't think they gave all the details."

"That is only to be expected, I fear," Dumbledore told him, nodding. "The Daily Prophet is sometimes informative, sometimes entertaining, but the only thing that is truly consistent about it is that it is always printed on paper."

Harry giggled, unable to help himself, and Dumbledore winked.

"I find the Quibbler has the virtue of also being entertaining," he added. "Though I notice no Quibbler has arrived yet. I imagine old Xenophilius is furiously updating the November issue. In any case, Harry… what happened was the result of the brave intentions of a good man and their ability to trick even myself."

He steepled his fingers. "You see, I was the one who cast the spell that hid your parents' house, and I duly made Sirius Black the Secret Keeper. It would be impossible for anyone to find them unless the Secret Keeper told them, and told them willingly."

After listening to that, Harry tilted his head.

"So..."

"So Sirius, James and Peter made a plan to trick everybody," Dumbledore explained. "There is a potion called _Polyjuice_, which is very hard to brew, and which allows the drinker to take on the body of any other living person. In secret, they prepared this potion – which would have taken months, unless they already had some made – and had Peter Pettigrew drink a potion prepared to make him into Sirius Black."

Harry nodded, seeing where that was going. "And so you cast the spell on Peter, but you thought it was Sirius?"

"Exactly," Dumbledore confirmed. "And then Peter told Voldemort of where your parents were hiding. When Sirius came after him, Peter blew up a street, faked his own death, and vanished into the sewers with the rats."

He sighed again. "So that is why I thought that Sirius must be guilty… I attended many of the trials that took place, but I could not attend them all, and when Sirius was placed in Azkaban I made the misguided assumption that all had been done according to the law."

* * *

Harry was quiet for a few minutes after that, thinking about what Professor Dumbledore had said.

It sounded like a series of awful mistakes had happened, made by everyone involved.

"Can you find it in your heart to forgive me my mistakes, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

"Sir, I don't think you're the only one who made a mistake here," Harry replied. "I think everyone involved did."

Then, because he wanted to be correct, he added, "...except for me, I think. I certainly think I was involved, but I don't remember making any mistakes."

Dumbledore nodded, a twinkle in his eye at that last comment.

"I am curious about something, though, Sir," Harry added. "How _did_ Peter Pettigrew get caught?"

"Ah, I might have said that that was not my story to tell," Dumbledore replied. "But since it involves you so, I believe I will be able to clarify."

He smiled. "You see, the trick is in the twins who joined us in Slytherin this year. Doubtless you are aware that Miss Forrester and Miss Sanura are not exactly what most would call human."

"Yes, Sir," Harry agreed. "I did notice that."

"Well, they are not our only non-human students in this year," Dumbledore explained. "You see, Mr. Smith and his sister Miss Smith are _kitsune_ – though the local way of describing them would be that they fall into the category of fae."

"I've read a bit about them," Harry said. "They've got some of their own kind of magic, and they can change into foxes as if they're all animagi. So that means that their pet fox..."

"...is in fact Miss Smith herself," Dumbledore confirmed. "Yes, though please avoid spoiling the surprise for as many people as possible. The two of them asked that I please allow them to keep up the joke. In any case, it seems that they have been engaged in a little series of pranks for some time now, and they entered into the Gryffindor dormitories while everyone was at the Halloween Feast."

Harry nodded, realizing how they'd got the password, and felt a bit embarrassed about it.

Dumbledore chuckled. "Naturally, their intent was to see whether they could play a prank on the Weasley Twins. But you can doubtless imagine their surprise when they got the wrong dorm rooms, and saw your friend Mr. Weasley's pet rat reading through a book called Redwall."

That was enough of a surprise that Harry didn't really know what to say about it.

"After that, well, as I understand it Miss Smith detained the rat in question, Mr. Smith sought out his head of house for advice, and that is how we come to be where we are now."

Dumbledore shook his head. "The whims of fate are peculiar to us all."

"So that's why Professor Snape came to get you?" Harry asked. "And then you took Peter Pettigrew to the Ministry?"

"I did indeed, Harry," Dumbledore agreed. "We also visited Azkaban to talk to Mr. Black. It was quite a night, and I was most grateful to be finally able to get to bed."

He tapped his chin, thinking. "Unfortunately the legal process, long belated as it is for Mr. Black, will take at least a few days to resolve. I believe however that it should be possible for him to visit at some point next week. Do you think you would be available to see him?"

"If I don't have class at the time, I think so, Sir," Harry replied. "Or Quidditch. My first game's on Saturday, and that might take all day."

"Perhaps, perhaps," Dumbledore agreed. "And of course it would not do to interrupt your education… perhaps this day next week would be best."

He nodded slightly, then focused on Harry. "Though I feel I should warn you, Harry, Mr. Black has spent more than a decade in the Wizard prison, Azkaban. He will not be spending any more time there, I am sure – few things indeed could cause someone to be sent there for so long, and he has been wronged by the legal system besides – but so much time there has doubtless worn him out."

"I know they have Dementors there, Sir," Harry said. "I read it in a detective novel. They said that they take away all kinds of happy memories… it sounds dreadful."

"And indeed it is, Harry," Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "Though Sirius has been sustained by his own knowledge of his innocence, as it was not a happy memory as such. He seems remarkably resilient for a man in his situation, but you should make allowances for how he will be when you do meet him."

"I understand, Sir," Harry said.

Dumbledore then checked a watch. "My goodness. It seems that this whole conversation has taken forty-five minutes less time than I thought it might. I don't suppose you have any more questions you might want to ask?"

Harry couldn't think of any, and said so.

"Then perhaps you will indulge me in a little pastime?" Dumbledore asked. "I have some small skill at magic, you see, and it's rare that I get a chance to show it off."

That sounded so odd that Harry had to see what Dumbledore could possibly mean. "I wouldn't mind that at all, Sir," he said, shifting a little in his seat.

Instead of retrieving his wand, however, Dumbledore took out a pack of playing cards.

"Pick a card," he said, fanning them out in front of him with the backs facing him. "Any will do."

Harry took the Two of Hearts, and memorized which one it was before putting it back in the deck.

Dumbledore shuffled them at that point, mixing them up thoroughly, then turned them all to face him and frowned.

After a long moment, he removed one from the pack with his slender fingers.

"Is this your card?" he asked.

Harry looked at the Four of Clubs, and shook his head.

"Bother," Dumbledore pronounced, putting the cards down. "It always seems very simple when the Muggles do it."

* * *

Harry thought to send a letter to Mr. Lupin that afternoon, mostly just to say that he hoped the man was okay – and that, even though it was all really complicated, he was glad that one of Mr. Lupin's friends had turned out to be both "alive" and "nice".

Hedwig went on her way with it, after a treat of some cubes of beef from the kitchens (George was only too happy to show him how to get in there) and Harry did his best to get on with as normal a week of school as could be expected.

* * *

Something that actually surprised Harry a bit was how normal that week felt. He still did Herbology working with Justin, who appreciated his more-or-less total immunity from the nastier plants but without just letting Harry do all the work, and in Transfiguration the only difference was a few questions about Animagi.

Apparently casting a spell intended to transfigure an animal on an Animagus who'd turned into that animal was "not safe, though mostly for the Animagus" and there was no limit on how long the Animagus could stay transformed.

Then Lily Moon asked whether an Animagus thought like a human when transformed, and Professor McGonagall told her pointedly that a transformed Animagus could certainly think well enough to concentrate on the Fundamental Theorem of Untransfiguration.

* * *

Potions was a little different. Harry was still working with Daphne, like he always did, but for some reason Professor Snape seemed a lot less harsh with anyone who made little mistakes than normal. When Ron put two frog brains in his potion instead of one, Professor Snape even came over to tell him and Dean _exactly_ how to fix the mistake – a complicated process with at least four extra steps, which needed some of the supplies from the cupboard – and Harry did his best to scribble notes about it on a spare piece of parchment in case it was useful.

Maybe they'd be doing how to fix potions in another year, or maybe even later this year. It sounded more like a NEWT or at least OWL thing, though.

Harry also stayed behind after that class to say thank-you to Professor Snape for helping, which the Professor didn't quite seem to know how to respond to.

* * *

Mr. Lupin wrote back on Thursday, and Harry got the letter only after a tough evening Quidditch practice session. Oliver Wood had been having everyone else do drills on the slowest brooms he could find against players on Cleansweep Sixes and other faster brooms, to try and make sure they could deal with the way that Slytherin had a complete set of fast modern Nimbuses, and it was kind of head-stretching how you had to think about positioning much more when you were slower.

Harry wasn't immune to that consideration, either – he might have been the Seeker, but Seekers had a role in disrupting the other teams from their formation plays if they had the time to spare, and since Harry had wings and could fly faster than his broom could technically manage he was the most mobile member of the team.

It had been a lot to think about, so fortunately it was only when Harry was heading back up to the castle that Hedwig came flapping down to fly alongside. Harry opened the letter right there, holding his broom against his side with a wing, and blinked when he saw how long it was.

"Who's that from, Harry?" Alicia asked. "Normally letters turn up at breakfast."

"Yeah, Hedwig seems to have decided to deliver at all hours," Harry agreed. "I'm not sure where that comes from, but it's nice."

Hedwig seemed very pleased by that way of putting it.

* * *

The letter took quite a long time to get through, and the demands of homework and stuff meant that Harry hadn't actually finished it by Friday. Mr. Lupin seemed to have wanted to say almost everything that came to his mind, which Harry was sort of touched by, and the fact he was sorry for having believed the worst about Sirius was only part of it.

It was something Harry was sort of thinking about during Defence class, where they were dealing with the bit of Gilderoy's book about werewolves where he talked about defeating the Wagga Wagga Werewolf himself. Seamus had been dragged up to the front of class to act out the part of the werewolf, which made Harry wonder if June was having to do that bit in the Defence class for the First-Year Hufflepuffs or if that would be a bit much, and _that_ made him wonder what the Homorphus Charm would do if it was cast on a werewolf like Mr. Lupin.

Or on a Warg like June, for that matter. She was certainly a wolf in body, and had been all her life, but would the charm reverse the werewolf-y bits?

Idly wondering what would happen if a Warg got bitten by a Werewolf, and if they'd become like Lupine from Reaper Man, Harry noted down the bits he already knew from Wanderings With Werewolves.

It did seem a bit odd that he only used the Homorphus Charm to deal with _one_ of the werewolves, though. There were a total of six in the book, and Harry circled that thought just moments before the bell went.

The Professor took the time to wish Harry good luck in the Quidditch match, which was nice, and told everyone that their homework was to write a poem about the defeat of the Wagga Wagga Werewolf.

The biggest problem Harry could see with that was that it was going to be hard to find enough rhymes for Wagga Wagga. Except for rhyming Wagga with Wagga, but that was sort of cheating.

He did want to look up where Wagga Wagga was, though, because about all that Professor Lockhart mentioned was that it was in Australia. That might be enough to make for a good rhyme, but some of the names of bits of Australia that Harry remembered would be really useful for that as well – like New South Wales (which could rhyme with Hails, or Wails) and Queensland (which was a bit harder, but which could rhyme with Hand?)

Maybe he should go and see if there were any rhyming dictionaries in Fort William after the Quidditch match.

* * *

The day of the match dawned a little gloomy, with scattered but quite dark clouds, and despite how it was the seventh of November it felt really quite warm. Harry didn't think it was the best flying weather he'd had, preferring high pressure whether hot or cold, but if you were going to have a sports match involving flying around at over fifty miles per hour in November in Scotland it was probably better for it to be quite a warm day for the time of year.

At least, if you didn't have a thick hide like Harry did. (And possibly an internal furnace as well.)

A little nervous about his first Quidditch match, Harry passed some of the morning reading a bit of _The Sapphire Rose_ – the bit about Eosian church politics was surprisingly entertaining – before heading down to have some breakfast.

That done, he told Oliver Wood where he was going and went down to the Quidditch pitch early – making sure to bring both his brooms, so there was a spare in case something went wrong.

Oliver turned up about half an hour later, and started impressing on Harry how their plan was going to be to do as well as possible to score and save points – but Harry's priority was to go for the Golden Snitch as soon as possible.

Harry hadn't planned on doing anything else, but it was good to have the confirmation.

Then everyone else turned up, including Cormac (who would be substituting in if anyone was injured, so he _could_ end up doing almost anything) and Oliver gave them all a strategy rundown – mostly reminding them all of things he'd been saying over and over for at least the previous month.

After that, out they went onto the pitch.

* * *

It felt a bit odd to have the whole school body staring at him at once. Harry's tail thumped on the ground a few times, watching as Madam Hooch had the two team captains shake hands, then she released the balls into the air.

There was a ten second pause to let the Snitch escape, and Harry looked up at the Bludgers circling ominously overhead as he mounted his broom. Then Madam Hooch blew the whistle, and everyone took off.

The Slytherin team rocketed into the sky on their much faster brooms, aiming to snag the Quaffle and score before Oliver had even made it to the goal hoops. Harry did what he was supposed to and flew as fast as he could, hammering the air with his wings to speed himself up, and managed to get in their way for just long enough that Oliver blocked the first shot on goal.

As soon as that was done, he turned to look for the Snitch. At first he couldn't see it, simply because he couldn't look at the whole pitch at once any more like he could when he was in the stands, but a moment later the little glint of gold showed up and he turned to aim straight for it.

"Look out, Harry!" Fred called, cutting across his path, and used his bat to knock a Bludger away. The impact was a loud _whang_, sending it off at ninety degrees to the path it had been taking before, but a moment later it curved around to come straight back at him.

Harry dodged, annoyed that he was losing momentum, and this time Fred knocked the Bludger directly towards Draco (who was the new Slytherin seeker). Harry refocused to going after the Snitch, looking around for a moment to see where it had escaped to before powering after it, but barely five seconds later the Bludger came right back around again and hit him in the side.

There was a groan from the Gryffindor portion of the stands, and Harry could faintly make out the sound of Hagrid assuring everyone that he was bound to be okay.

Then the Bludger hit him again, this time on the head, and Harry slewed a little to the side.

It was annoying more than anything, as he lost sight of the Snitch and now he had to look for it again.

* * *

Five minutes later, Harry had been hit at least twenty times by the Bludger and was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with it. He was fairly sure they were supposed to go after all the players, rather than just one of them.

He'd have to check _Quidditch Through The Ages_ again just to be sure.

The score was also at least thirty-zero to Slytherin already, so Harry decided to try something different.

He'd looked it up once, and the rules specifically said there wasn't a limit on how _high_ you could fly during a game. So he turned his broom upwards, spread his wings to the full, and climbed as fast as he could.

"You're supposed to be down here, Potter!" Draco called, flying close for a moment with his much more powerful broom, then turned away to orbit a bit higher than the highest part of the stands and look for the Snitch. The Bludger smacked into Harry again, knocking his glasses off, and Harry caught them just in time before they fell to the ground and got lost.

Then he decided he was about high up enough and pulled out of his climb. The Bludger was still following him, which was really very surprising, and Harry tried to ignore it as it bounced repeatedly off his back just over his wing inserts.

* * *

After about twenty seconds of looking, Harry finally spotted the little glitter of gold that was the Snitch flying low over the grass near the base of the Slytherin goal hoops.

So he turned his broom off and went into a dive.

The Bludger followed, but Harry was much faster like this than he was flying around normally – even with the aid of a broom – and outdistanced it easily. The wind whistled around his ears and tugged at his robes as he went faster and faster, rocketing past Draco, then flared his wings out with a _snap_ to slow himself down.

He hit the ground still doing about forty miles an hour, which did sting a bit, but his paw closed around the Snitch in triumph.

Then the Bludger arrived.

Harry was pretty much certain this was the way it _wasn't_ supposed to work. If it was, then it wouldn't have taken three people to pin the Bludger down.

Also, Oliver had said something about how Bludgers weren't supposed to do that, which Harry supposed was a sort of clue.

* * *

The next day, Harry went up to Professor Dumbledore's office again. This time it was in the morning, and the password was different ('Drumsticks', which Harry sort of remembered were a type of chewy lollipop).

When he got to the top of the stairs, Professor Dumbledore was waiting for him – and so was a tall man with long black hair, looking like he'd had a very rough time for the last several years.

It did look like he'd recently had a wash, though, and probably a haircut as well.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore smiled. "I believe you've met, but it was quite a while ago and you might not recognize one another."

Standing from behind his desk, he walked around to introduce them. "This is Sirius Black, Harry. Sirius, this is Harry Potter."

"It is," Mr. Black agreed. "When I saw the Prophet I couldn't believe… but… those really are Lily's eyes."

"Did my mother have eyes like this?" Harry asked, trying to sort of indicate slit pupils. "And – it's nice to meet you, Mr. Black."

"Don't call me Mr. Black, Harry," the man said.

He hesitated, then smiled. "Call me Sirius. Or if you must be formal, call me Most Noble Head Of The House Of Black. I haven't checked, but I'm _pretty_ sure I am now."

"I can see the two of you are getting on very well," Professor Dumbledore said brightly. "If you will excuse me, I'll leave the two of you to talk. I've got some marking to do."

"You do, Sir?" Harry asked, confused. "I didn't know you taught any classes."

"I do some years, but sadly nobody was interested in the noble art of Alchemy this year," Dumbledore told him. "Or last year, come to that. Perhaps I should tell people it's an option for NEWTs. No, this is a set of essays I found on my desk this morning."

His eyes twinkled. "I've got no clue what subject they're for, but it will be a pleasure finding out."

Harry chuckled, but Sirius started to laugh. It bubbled up in a great big burst that obviously caught him by surprise, and he gasped a couple of times before it finally stopped.

"I… really needed that," he said.

Dumbledore smiled, and went into the room next door.

* * *

Once the Headmaster had left, Harry didn't really know what to say – or what to start with, because it felt like there were so many things he could say and he wasn't sure if any of them sounded right.

Maybe it would help to think about how this sort of thing worked in books, but normally in books there had been some kind of terrible misunderstanding and they were meeting in a tense situation… not in Dumbledore's plushly appointed office, with a phoenix snoozing nearby.

"You said I could call you Sirius… what about Padfoot?" he tried.

Sirius blinked, then realized. "Oh – yes, Moony said he'd told you."

"Well, he told me about how you were Animagi," Harry said. "But the reason I know what your names were is that I got given the Marauders' Map."

That news made Sirius smile, which transformed his whole face, and the sight was so amazing that Harry had to smile as well.

"You got the Map!" the man said. "Brilliant! What have you done with it so far?"

"Um… nothing, really," Harry replied. "I… kind of feel guilty about that now, I might have been able to see Peter on it."

"No, I don't want to talk about Peter," Sirius said, shaking his head. "Let's talk about something else. So I heard that you're the Seeker this year!"

* * *

The conversation lasted a long time.

Once they'd actually started talking, Harry found it very easy to _keep_ talking to Sirius. The man alternated between asking about Harry's life and what it was like to be a dragon and then switching into telling stories about his own life.

Whenever Peter Pettigrew was about to come up, Sirius abruptly changed topic, except for one time when it was simply unavoidable and he made sure to tell Harry very firmly and clearly that Peter was "a total berk".

Harry wasn't sure what a berk was, but he thought he got the basic sense of what Sirius was saying… if only from context, at least.

* * *

"...anyway, James had this idea of writing Lily a love poem," Sirius explained. "Because he was trying to really convince her that he was thoughtful and stuff."

Harry nodded, seeing the logic in that.

"The problem is," Sirius went on, drawing out the words with a real relish. "James used this metaphor, where Lily was a doe, and naturally that meant that _he_ was in the role of the stag."

"Like how he could turn into one," Harry agreed.

"The way we said it was that James could turn into Prongs," Sirius clarified. "But the thing is, he sort of forgot that she had _no_ idea about this."

He started laughing. "So he sent this poem to Lily, and she had _no_ idea who it was by or what was with this whole deer metaphor. James was waiting for her to tell him how sensitive it was for a _week_ before Remus and I took him aside to explain!"

Harry had to laugh at that as well, imagining his father being terribly disappointed that his clever poem had completely fallen flat.

When Sirius had finished laughing, he wiped his eyes, then blinked a few times.

"It's all a little strange," he said, eventually. "For the last week it's like I've been living in a dream… except I didn't really have many nice dreams in Azkaban."

He put his thumb and forefinger on his temples. "Sometimes I thought about trying to escape. I thought I could do it, they didn't know I was an Animagus, but… it didn't seem like I could do anything that was worth it. I didn't have a hope of finding..."

"The rat," Harry filled in, and Sirius nodded sharply.

"And I couldn't help you, either," he went on. "Though I can't remember if I even thought of it… but you were with _someone_, you could go to school, and that's more than I could give you."

Harry reached out a paw and put it on Sirius' shoulder.

"And – well – I feel like I'm about to wake up," Sirius explained. "And be back there, rather than be here and happy..."

He swallowed. "But I have to keep reminding myself. It's over. I'm out. And… and that things have changed, while I was in there. And they're good things."

"I really wish you hadn't been in there at all," Harry agreed. "It'd be nice if I'd known when I was eight that being a dragon was unusual."

Sirius snorted, then shook his head.

"I'm still trying to get my head around it," he said. "It might take me a while… but I can do it."

"I'm sure you can," Harry told him. "It took my friend Ron a while to get used to the idea that the trouble he was having doing spells was an old wand, not how good _he_ was. And your thing's much worse."

He frowned. "Do you have somewhere to stay?"

"Well, Moony – ah, Remus – has been putting me up," Sirius explained. "There's a Black family town house in London, but it's going to take ages to clear out, everyone in the family was either Dark or disowned."

He snorted. "One good thing is that Remus isn't exactly very well off, and he hates charity, but I've been paying him about five times what a hotel room would cost. I don't think he actually knows that… don't tell him, okay?"

* * *

Sirius asked if the Defence Against the Dark Arts post was still cursed, and Harry told him that it seemed to be because their first teacher last year had actually been possessed by Tom Riddle. That meant that Harry had to explain who Tom Riddle _was_, and then Sirius seemed quite angry about the whole thing until Harry went on to tell him about how Professor Quirrell had left the castle.

Since the best way that Harry could find to summarize how the whole thing had ended was 'and then he got so angry that he imploded', Sirius seemed to find the whole thing very funny.

"Your friend," he said, trying to control a smile. "Your friend. Annoyed Voldemort. So much that… that… that he just imploded."

Harry nodded.

"Professor Dumbledore said that he's probably still around, in the same way he could be still around after he died the first time. But it took him ten years to come back as a not very good Defence teacher, so maybe it'll take him a lot longer to come back able to do something useful."

Sirius took that on board, smiling slightly at the description of Tom-Riddle-as-Professor-Quirrell's classroom skills. "What about this year? Who do you have this year?"

"That's Professor Lockhart," Harry replied. "He's written loads of books about how good he is at stuff, but I think we're mostly doing theory this term. He does know a spell that turns a werewolf back into a human, though"

"That _does_ sound useful," Sirius agreed. "And how's everything else? Your Potions teacher treating you well?"

It sounded like he expected the answer to be no, and when Harry said that, yes, Professor Snape was usually a bit abrupt but was quite a good teacher it seemed like Sirius was dealing with an answer he didn't want to hear.

"...well..." he said, after a long pause. "I suppose I'll take your word for it."

He rubbed his fingers together, then frowned at them and tried again. On the third attempt there was a nice crisp _snap_, and he pointed that hand at Harry. "So! There's a very serious question I have to ask, Harry."

Harry nodded, waiting to hear it.

"Only one of my friends is still alive," Sirius went on. "And you're the only person who's any memory of my other friends. So… what do you want me to be, Harry?"

Harry tilted his head, not sure he understood. "I thought the options were human or dog?"

"No, then it would be a very _Padfoot_ question," Sirius said. "I was talking about a very _Sirius_ question."

That made Harry snort, as he finally got the joke. "That's terrible."

"It's been years since I was able to tell it," Sirius replied. "I have a much better name for joking than my brother Regulus did… anyway, Harry."

He sank back in the chair a little.

"I don't really know what I should be for you," he explained, with his eyes closed. "I should have stayed with you… I shouldn't have gone after the rat. But I've missed so much of you growing up, now, and I want to make sure I don't do this wrong."

There was a little catch in his voice, and Harry swallowed.

"Well..." he began, slowly. "I don't think I need a _father_ sort of person. I've been getting on quite well so far, and I have somewhere to stay over the summer holidays with my aunt and uncle. But Uncle Vernon isn't much of an _uncle_ sort of person. So it'd be nice to have one of those."

He shrugged a wing, flapping it out to the side before pulling it back. "And to have someone to talk about magic to, as well. I stayed with my friend Neville for the second half of last summer, and that was nice."

"All right!" Sirius said, sounding positively delighted. "Just you watch, Harry, I'll be the coolest uncle you can imagine!"

"But I'm not hairy," the young drake replied, tilting his head. "These are scales."

Sirius blinked for a few seconds, then a slow smile spread.

"I made that joke the first time I saw you, back when you were only a few hours old," he said. "You weren't hairy then either."

* * *

After checking the time, Sirius sighed.

"It looks like I'll have to go, Harry," he said. "I've got another appointment with the therapist."

"You've got a therapist?" Harry asked. "That sounds like a good idea."

"Well, she says she's a therapist," Sirius shrugged. "She's my cousin, Andromeda. But she _is_ a healer, so I suppose it might be helping out."

He paused, then glanced in the direction of the doorway Dumbledore had left through.

"I think we've got a couple of minutes, though," he decided. "Want to see Padfoot?"

That sounded very interesting to Harry, and he said so.

Sirius took a deep breath, and then-

It was a very peculiar thing to see. It happened all at once, but not in the blink of an eye, so Harry sort of had a vague impression of joints changing shape and fur growing out.

Then instead of Sirius Black there was _Padfoot_ standing there, a great big dog with jet-black fur and the same pale eyes he'd had as a man.

Harry was very impressed, and said so, and Padfoot wagged his tail before giving Harry a sudden, slobbery lick.

"Ah, what a pity," Dumbledore said.

Padfoot stopped abruptly and stepped back, and Harry turned his neck to look at where Dumbledore was. "Is something wrong, Professor?"

"Oh, I simply wanted to let Sirius know about the matter of the homework," Dumbledore explained. "I believe I have solved the conundrum, you see, and I wondered if he might be interested to know."

Walking around to his desk, Dumbledore winked at Harry before continuing. "After looking very closely at all the pages, it seems to me that these are in fact the details of a recently considered statute by the International Confederation of Wizards."

He shuffled them together. "I suppose it is a little embarrassing that I have found so many spelling mistakes."

Padfoot snorted.

"I should also let you know, Harry," Dumbledore added, "that you will almost certainly have to stay with your Aunt and Uncle for at least some weeks of each summer. You see, there is a form of magical protection in place that keeps you safe from Voldemort so long as you call that place home for around a month every year."

Harry nodded. "All right, Sir. That seems simple enough, I had a good time there last summer."

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced. "Oh, and if you do see Sirius, please let him know that I would like him to teach you Occlumency when he gets the chance. There's no rush – a summer project is fine."

* * *

AN:

* * *

oops I accidentally a plot

Severus, naturally, considers this situation to mean he has won their rivalry _forever_. It's done wonders for his mood.


	25. Remember November

Meeting Sirius helped Harry sort of put the odd experiences of the last week or so behind him a little, and he rather thankfully settled back into a Hogwarts routine – or as routine as anything could ever be at Hogwarts, anyway.

The November Quibbler finally arrived the following Wednesday, with a really quite good drawing on the front cover of Sirius Black on top of the page and Peter Pettigrew on the bottom. If you touched one of the pictures then the wizard turned into their Animagus form, and if you changed them both then Wormtail silently squeaked and began running away from Padfoot all over the cover.

The usual mix of articles was absent, as well, with almost everything focused on Sirius or Peter. The headline article was How To Tell If Your Pet Is An Animagus, which suggested the staggering total of thirty-five different ways someone could work that out – from asking 'are you an Animagus' in a clear voice, to trying to include them in conversation, to putting them in a room with the Wizarding Wireless tuned to a particularly obnoxious Italian band and seeing if they liked it or not.

Harry thought it would make much more sense to just use magic somehow, like however it was that Professor Snape had confirmed that Scabbers really was Peter Pettigrew.

Then there were articles about how Sirius Black had remained mostly sane in prison, articles suggesting that he'd spent most of his time sentenced to Azkaban not actually _in_ Azkaban but moonlighting as a singer called Stubby Boardman; it further said that, since he _was_ Stubby Boardman, it was clear that he wasn't at all involved in the initial incident in the first place (as a witness, let alone as a participant) since he'd been having a romantic dinner at the time.

Harry was a little confused by the photograph, which had a picture of Sirius Black printed twice side by side – only that one of them was labelled as Stubby Boardman and the other was labelled Sirius Black.

One article claimed that Sirius Black had known that Barty Crouch was trying to corner the Invisibility Cloak market and that that was why he'd been thrown in prison; another claimed that Sirius had been romantically involved with Minister Bagnold and that she'd been having an affair with Barty Crouch. That seemed unlikely to Harry for all sorts of reasons, in fact for so many reasons it was a little hard to quite be sure which reason to think was the most important.

Aside from that, and from the usual Quibbler pieces about cryptid sightings (one article claimed to have seen a Dodo, as in _not_ a Diricawl), there was also a long piece about how Lily Potter had been an unregistered heron animagus.

Harry wasn't sure where they'd got _that_ idea from.

* * *

The week after that, and shortly after the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw Quidditch match, Harry was climbing the stairs to the Astronomy tower along with the rest of the year.

"I kind of wish we didn't have to do this so _late_," Megan Jones grumbled, a few places behind him.

"Well, it's astronomy, isn't it?" Sally-Anne Perks replied. "I'd like to see you do astronomy during the day."

"Muggles can do that," Ron contributed. "With their really big telescopes, anyway, and depending on what they're looking at. It's whether the sky is brighter than the stars."

"How does _that_ work?" Sally-Anne said, baffled. "Oops – sorry, Harry!"

"Don't worry, my fault," Harry replied, rolling his tail up so it wouldn't get trodden on again.

"It's because the stars and planets and stuff are still _there_," Ron explained. "It's just harder to see them. Like… like how the Black Lake is still there even if it's really misty in the morning."

They reached the top of the Astronomy Tower, and Harry stepped out into the mostly-clear night with the stars shining overhead.

It was a bit odd, because he was sure it had been overcast when they'd set off.

"Why is it so clear, Professor?" he asked, looking around for Professor Sinistra. "It always seems to be really good weather when we have Astronomy."

"That's why it's the Astronomy tower," Professor Sinistra replied. "It's bewitched, though the enchantment isn't perfect – that's why it's sometimes cloudy here, though usually that's when it's raining or snowing everywhere else. When that's happening, you can sometimes see snow or rain falling if you look far enough away."

Once everyone had arrived, she coughed gently to get their attention. "Now, today we're going to be starting on the asteroids. Who has a good description of asteroids?"

Hermione's hand was the first up.

"They're smaller than planets and they orbit the Sun," she said. "They're usually found in the Asteroid Belt."

"Good," Professor Sinistra said. "Mr. Goldstein?"

"They weren't discovered yet in ancient times," the boy answered.

"Also a good point, they're much fainter than planets," the Professor agreed. "Mr. Weasley?"

"One of them wiped out the Dinosaurs," Ron said.

There was a short pause, and then Theodore Nott said, "Pardon?"

"Can you explain, Mr. Weasley?" Professor Sinistra asked. "I hadn't heard about this."

Ron nodded, and started to somewhat-hesitantly explain about the giant crater Muggle scientists had found and how it was at the same time as dinosaurs had suddenly vanished.

The lesson got a bit derailed after that.

* * *

"...so that's Tennis," Dean said. "What do you think?"

"It sounds kind of boring, compared to Wizard sports," Neville replied. "Shouldn't the tennis balls fly around by themselves or something?"

"No, because Muggles don't have magic," Dean explained. "On account of being Muggles."

"That does sound like a good point," Neville admitted.

Harry chuckled, then looked back down at his latest History of Magic essay on The Medieval Assembly of European Wizards.

It was almost at the length it was supposed to be, but not quite, and he thought for a long moment before rummaging through the books in his bag and picking out one that he thought might help. It was a novel set during the late Middle Ages, which seemed a lot like he'd heard The Three Musketeers was like, but more to the point it talked a lot about how the Germanic wizarding community had been hidden all over the rest of Europe during the Thirty Years' War to keep them safe from the chaos.

It wouldn't be a good idea to _trust_ any of the specific bits in the book, but it sounded a lot like the sort of thing he could look for in a history book to confirm it happened.

"...the problem with doing cricket here is that there isn't a big enough pitch for it," Dean was saying. "Except for the Quidditch Pitch, and for some reason everybody thinks that has to be kept perfectly safe."

"Well, it does!" Ron said, looking up from his own homework – he'd said something about how one of the Defenestrations of Prague had involved Wizards somehow, though Harry hadn't looked that bit up. "It's sacred turf!"

"Ron, the only times that Quidditch players even touch the ground are when they're about to take off at the beginning of the match and when things go badly wrong," Dean countered. "You could replace the entire pitch with two ten foot circles of polished wood over a swimming pool and it would barely affect the game. Six wooden stumps and a crease aren't going to wreck it."

"...actually, I'd want to see that," Hermione voiced. "Maybe if the Snitch was underwater? Bubble-Head charms are a thing, and you have to admit it would be pretty amazing to watch Seekers diving into the water like gannets."

* * *

A few days later, the Daily Prophet was full of news about the Pettigrew trial.

Apparently there were some quite elaborate security measures, just to make sure Pettigrew didn't get away or any other members of Tom Riddle's old organization didn't try to either silence him or break him out of the trial. Since he was an Animagus, and one for a small animal, that was difficult to say the least.

The papers said he'd tried coming up with all sorts of excuses, many of which had been promptly shot down by the lawyer for the prosecution – he'd said he was in hiding, but he hadn't had an explanation for why he'd gone to a Wizarding family _or_ why he hadn't just fled the country. (That made Harry wonder why his parents hadn't left the country, actually, but he supposed if everyone who didn't like Voldemort had fled the country he'd just have ended up sort of winning by default, and you couldn't do that everywhere.)

The way he'd killed twelve Muggles to get away had also come in for some sharp criticism, which was fair enough, but Harry didn't like reading too much about that because it was quite an unpleasant topic. It seemed like it would take a while before the trial was over, just because of the complicated legal process, and Harry was halfway reading about the possible ways to keep an Animagus prisoner when Ron opened a letter and swore.

"Ron!" Hermione said sharply. "What was that about?"

"I'm going to have to go to the trial," Ron explained. "Because he was my pet. Percy's going to have to go too, I think, because he was Percy's pet first."

"Ouch," Dean said. "That's going to be rough, man. Any idea when?"

"It says… Thursday morning?" Ron blinked. "That can't be right, that's during class."

"I'll make sure to take good notes," Harry promised. "And we can do the practical stuff together."

"Don't you have Quidditch?" Neville asked.

"Yeah, but Oliver's let us off slightly because there's not another game until Spring," Harry replied. "That's a really relative thing, though… I still haven't finished some books I got back in August."

"At least that's better than finishing everything you have available to read," Hermione said. "Though there is a library for that."

"Two," Harry agreed. "Three if I can manage to find the time to go to Fort William."

* * *

At dinner the next day, Harry got one of the unusual preparations the House-Elves seemed to like making for him.

He was about to start eating it when Blaise wandered over.

"Oh, hey!" Harry said brightly. "Is something up?"

"Oh, I just smelled something familiar," Blaise replied. "Is that yours?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It appeared in front of me and it's got a little Harry Only label, so it might not be safe for you."

Blaise gave it a sniff, and nodded. "Yeah, that's… probably got about four ounces of hemlock in it."

"How do you even know what Hemlock smells like?" Dean asked, blinking. "Wait, isn't that a poison?"

"We use it in Potions," Harry pointed out. "It was one of the ones we did in October, I think."

"That's only if you neutralize it," Blaise informed him. "That's going to be _extravagantly_ dangerous. Make sure you've got a Bezoar on hand in case you're not immune to it."

"Sure," Harry agreed. "I think Hermione made me carry one..."

"That still doesn't answer how you know what it smells like," Dean said.

"Mother is quite an inventive cook," Blaise informed him, as Harry dug out the Bezoar from his robes.

Now considering himself ready for the meal, Harry trimmed off a tiny piece of meat and gave it a careful taste.

"Oh, huh," he realized. "That's the sauce they used last week as well."

"I'm starting to think I should invite you around one of these days," Blaise informed Harry. "You'd probably like Mother's cooking. You wouldn't even need anything from the pepper grinder with it."

Harry frowned, wondering what pepper would have to do with it.

"Bezoar in the pepper grinder?" Dean asked.

"Bezoar in the pepper grinder," Blaise confirmed. "This is why I like you. You're surprisingly sneaky for a Lion."

"I'm going to choose not to be offended by that," Dean decided, after a bit of consideration.

* * *

The day of Ron's part of the trial came and went, and when Ron arrived back at the castle that afternoon he shook his head.

"That was so weird," he said. "I had to answer questions about what Peter had done, and I had to say he'd mostly been asleep. Then I had to say what spells I'd done on him."

"Was it hard?" Harry asked.

"Not really," Ron told him. "Not as bad as I was expecting, anyway… they showed me a load of pictures and I had to pick out which ones were him, to prove it was actually him. I'm not sure _why_, though."

"They're probably being really thorough," Harry guessed. "Like… _really_ thorough."

He shrugged. "Maybe it's because of how Sirius didn't get a trial last time? They're making sure Peter obviously has _so much_ of a trial that nobody can possibly say he didn't have one."

Ron thought about that, and decided it made sense.

"Okay, so what happened in the lessons I missed?" he asked.

"We did the Softening Charm," Harry replied. "But because that was in Transfiguration we did a lot more about the theory and stuff."

"Right, properties and stuff," Ron realized. "Bleah..."

"I'm sure there's a use for it," Harry shrugged. "Maybe there's something you could use it for where you could make something softer, or softer _and_ something else?"

Ron frowned, thinking about that.

"Anyway, we've got Potions later," Harry added. "So there's that."

"What's this one?" Ron asked. "Hope it's not a hard one."

Harry told him it was Swelling Solution, which was one of those ones where the name was a bit strange. It wasn't really a solution, except that things were dissolved, maybe, but if that was why you'd call it a solution then almost any potion could be called a solution. You'd have a Boil-Removing Solution and a Forgetfulness Solution and so on.

Then Ron told Harry to stop going off on a tangent.

* * *

An odd rumour was going around the castle the next morning, about how during the Defence Against the Dark Arts classes for the Sixth-Years there'd been an incident where Percy Weasley had blasted the teacher out the window.

Percy seemed very embarrassed by the idea and didn't say whether it was true or not, but that didn't stop Fred and George from both deciding it _had_ to be true and calling him Percy the Defenestrator.

Harry wondered if maybe it was because of the trial, or maybe because Percy didn't like the idea of his NEWT homework being writing a poem.

In their own Defence lesson the same day, Harry had to play the role of one of the werewolves that Professor Lockhart had defeated – this time in Kathmandu. It didn't work very well, because Harry got a bit too into the role and Professor Lockhart may have been able to wrestle a werewolf successfully but Harry was a bit too much for him.

Afterwards, Harry stayed behind to apologize, then asked again about the Patronus. Professor Lockhart said that the Patronus was a very difficult charm and that he wasn't comfortable teaching it to a second year, and Harry tried to explain that he was okay with the idea that it would take a lot of practice but Professor Lockhart simply didn't seem to be interested in that – in fact, he instead took the time to tell Harry how to respond to fan mail.

That made Harry realize he hadn't got any fan mail, and while at first he just felt quite happy about that he did wonder whether maybe it wasn't getting to him.

* * *

"I've got news!" Hermione announced one Sunday afternoon, putting a hefty book on the table her friends were sitting around.

"Really?" Ron asked. "I thought the Daily Prophet came in the morning. And was smaller."

"No, not _that_ kind of news," Hermione replied. "I've looked through all the legal precedents and stuff – it's part of NEWT History of Magic to do a project on that sort of thing."

"Blimey, you're doing your course work early," Neville said, more than a little intimidated by the prospect.

Harry had to agree. Maybe he _was_ thinking about asking Sirius for help with his friends learning how to become Animagi, and maybe he _was_ trying to learn the Patronus charm, but both of those were sort of hobby-interest things.

"That's not why I'm doing it," Hermione explained. "But it might help if I do History of Magic at NEWT level. Anyway, I looked up the laws on what you're allowed to do to a House-Elf."

She produced a sheaf of notes, putting them on top of the book. "The law is very clear on it. You're allowed to tell a House-Elf off, but you're not allowed to verbally abuse them and you're not allowed to either harm them physically or force them to do it to themselves."

"Yeah, everyone knows you're not _allowed_ to do it," Ron said.

"Then why does Dobby keep hitting himself?" Hermione asked. "His owners aren't allowed to treat him like that!"

"I bet it's because Dobby thinks he _has_ to," Dean suggested. "And his owners probably broke the law in the past, but now they might not even need to any more."

Hermione deflated a bit. "I think you're right..."

"Then… if Dobby is being treated badly, couldn't we get him away from his family?" Harry asked.

"There's two ways that can happen," Hermione replied, putting a smaller book called _The Benefits Of Brownies, Or, The House Elf_ on top of the pile. "There's a kind of magical connection that a house elf has with their owners, and if that's broken then they're automatically free."

"Oh, yeah, the clothes thing," Neville realized. "Gran told me about that, she said I should never give Tandy any clothes unless she asks for them and we talk about it."

He shrugged. "I forgot a few times, but I don't count as Tandy's owner, so it's not _really_ a problem."

Hermione nodded. "Yes, so it would have to be whoever Dobby's proper owner is."

She shuffled the notes around. "The other way is the House Elf Relocation Bureau, but they're apparently not very good. The legal arguments take months, and usually you don't find out who the owner is anyway."

"It sounds like it's going to be really hard to help Dobby out," Harry summarized. "That's a pity. He did really seem like he was trying to help."

"I know," Hermione agreed. "Even if the way he was trying to help was a bit odd."

She looked around. "Any idea what he meant by Hogwarts being dangerous?"

"Maybe he was talking about Peter," Ron suggested, looking uncomfortable. "But if he was, then Hogwarts hasn't been safe for years."

"I think it's actually safer this year than last year," Neville volunteered. "Last year one of the teachers was You-Know-Who, this year the most dangerous thing in the castle is probably… well, it's probably whatever the Seventh Years are doing for Defence. Or a malfunctioning potion."

"What about a rogue Bludger?" Ron asked.

"That wasn't in the castle," Neville replied, with impeccable logic as far as Harry was concerned.

"And I don't think the Seventh Years are doing anything dangerous in defence," Dean added. "After that Percy thing I asked the NEWT students, they said they're just doing readings out of Professor Lockhart's books as well."

"What?" Hermione asked, then looked back down at the legal research she'd done, then back up at Dean. "But… why?"

She shook her head. "That just doesn't make sense to me – he should be teaching them the Homomorphus Charm, the Patronus, shield spells and point casting and all the things he's done in the books."

"Yeah, I'm kind of wondering about that," Ron said. "We've never actually seen him do anything impressive, have we?"

"Well… teachers don't _have_ to do impressive things," Hermione countered. "But – well, I suppose Professor Flitwick does, and so does Professor McGonagall, and Professor Snape."

"Even Professor Binns does do one thing that's impressive," Dean contributed. "He's old enough he probably lived through some of that history."

"Actually, how old _is_ Professor Binns?" Harry asked. "I know wizards can get really old, and he died of old age."

"Well… hold on a minute," Hermione asked, and hurried off. She pushed open the portrait hole door, and left.

The four boys looked after her, then at the big book on the table.

"...any idea how long she's going to be?" Ron asked.

* * *

Some minutes later, Hermione came back with a book marked with an eagle on the cover.

"I thought I saw this last time I was in the Ravenclaw library," Hermione explained. "It's a biography of the Hogwarts headmaster before Professor Dumbledore, Armando Dippet."

She flipped it open, finding the number she was after. "According to this, he was born in 1637… and he was still alive when the book was published in 1987, for his three hundred and fiftieth year."

"So… Professor Binns is really old, then," Harry summarized.

His tail twisted a bit. "Actually, I think that's really good. I was sort of vaguely worried about whether dragons lived longer than people. The dragons in the Pern books really hate it when their partners die..."

"I don't think Gandalf enjoyed living longer than his friends, either," Neville agreed. "And isn't that why Arwen has to pick what kind of life she's going to live?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "I wonder how Dumbledore feels about that kind of thing, actually..."

Now he thought about it, Dumbledore must be terribly sad about all the people he knew who had died in the war with Tom Riddle. He'd never realized that before.

* * *

The next morning, there was a rumour buzzing around the breakfast tables.

Harry sort of half-listened at first, too busy reading through _Dark Force Rising_ and enjoying how sneaky Grand Admiral Thrawn was, but when he overheard that it involved the Smith twins he bookmarked his place to listen in.

It sounded like Fred and George had worked out who had been pranking them and had decided to prank back. If the rumours were correct, all the quills the twins owned had been subtly charmed – it didn't look like anything was wrong when you were looking, but they had a tendency to dance over and doodle _Weasels Are Best_ in the margins of whatever work they were doing.

Harry wondered just how good Fred and George were at that kind of magic, and how they'd learned it – Hogwarts classes taught you a lot, but how much time did Fred and George spend experimenting that they could work out all this stuff?

Especially since they both did Quidditch as well. Maybe they just didn't sleep very much?

The idea of coming up with all kinds of new spells was interesting, and Harry had _sort of_ already done it by accident with the _Xenographia_ spell. Maybe that was the plus side of pranking, though Harry thought that maybe it would have to wait until his NEWT years because at least then there was the possibility of having less homework.

That or maybe he'd stop doing Quidditch, though he really wanted to keep it going for at least a year. Or could you just not go to practices?

Oliver probably wouldn't like that, though.

* * *

As November changed into December, Harry thought about the fact that he now had some adult friends – or, adult pseudo-relatives? He really wasn't sure – to think about getting presents for. That was on top of Ron, Dean, Neville and Hermione, who he had some ideas for as well.

Nothing was really going to be able to do better than the wand from last year, for Ron, so Harry wasn't going to try and was thinking about maybe making Ron something instead. The others were a bit easier, but trying to think what to get Sirius was really tricky.

Harry's letters to Sirius, and Sirius's letters back, had made it pretty clear that his 'sort of uncle' was fantastically well off, making Harry's hoard look small, and that meant that Harry was having real trouble just coming up with what Sirius would like but that he wouldn't have already got. It didn't help that he'd only really _talked_ to Sirius once, and sent a few letters back and forth, so he wasn't even sure what kind of thing Sirius liked.

It was all a big puzzle, and since Harry liked the idea of getting his friends presents it was one he was thinking very hard about as he read over his Transfiguration homework.

Noticing a spelling mistake where he'd written _house_ instead of _mouse_, Harry took out his quill and refreshed the erasing charm. He rubbed out the offending word and re-wrote it, then kept going.

Then the portrait hole opened and Fred and George tumbled in, pursued by donuts.

A wave of shock, then laughter, ran around the common room as both Weasley Twins picked themselves up before running for the stairs to their dorms. The donuts followed them, shooting right past the table Harry and his friends were at, and Harry stuck out a wing to block one of them with a _plap_ sound before juggling it with his other wing and biting it out of the air.

It turned out to be full of melted fudge, which was quite surprising, though he supposed it wasn't as surprising as if it was full of something like… soup.

It was only a guess, but he thought the Smiths weren't going to take the prospect of losing a prank war lying down.

* * *

Harry was lying on his bed one afternoon, reading the bit in Lords and Ladies where it was talking about how nobody had said elves were nice, when there was a sharp little _pop_ next to him.

Curious, he put a bookmark in and looked over, and was quite surprised to see that Dobby was standing there wringing his hands.

"Hello again, Dobby," he said. "Is everything all right?"

The question seemed to make Dobby rock back on his heels a bit, and he burst into tears.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Harry asked, concerned.

"Oh, Harry Potter, sir..." Dobby sniffled. "Dobby only wanted Harry Potter to be safe! But no matter what Dobby did, Harry Potter came back to Hogwarts and stayed at Hogwarts!"

"Well, I want to learn how to do magic," Harry explained. "And it's where most of my friends are. And it hasn't really been all that dangerous, either."

"If only Harry Potter knew," Dobby groaned, pulling on his long ears. "Hogwarts will be very dangerous for him! He must make sure he is safe!"

"I think I am safe," Harry replied. "Or… mostly safe, anyway. I don't think Professor Lockhart is actually You Know Who in disguise, though."

Dobby's lip trembled, and he seemed to be about to say something, but then Harry realized something.

"What do you mean about no matter what you did?" he asked.

"Dobby tried everything Dobby could think of!" the house-elf announced. "Dobby tried to find when Harry Potter could be blamed for magic, so he would have to not go to school, but Harry Potter never left the wizard house! Then Dobby tried sealing the gateway so Harry Potter could not get on the train, and Harry Potter just waited until the gate was open! Dobby had to iron his hands for that-"

"Oh, that was you?" Harry asked. "They were really confused about it – wait, you had to iron your hands?"

Dobby showed Harry his long fingers, which still had a few red marks on them, and Harry swallowed.

"That's… really… you don't have to do that kind of thing, Dobby," he said.

"Dobby must!" Dobby replied, shocked. "Dobby must punish himself if he does something wrong!"

"No, I mean you actually _don't _have to," Harry countered. "My friend Hermione looked it up. Nobody is allowed to make a house-elf punish themselves."

The idea made Dobby stand stock-still for at least a minute, waving slightly back and forth, and Harry wondered if the little elf had broken.

"But when Dobby found out that Harry Potter had got to Hogwarts anyway, Dobby was so surprised!" Dobby burst out. "Dobby burned master's dinner, and he got such a flogging!"

That made Harry actually angry, much more than Dobby thinking he had to punish himself had done. He must have snarled slightly, because Dobby took a step back and looked very worried.

"I don't – I'm not angry at you, Dobby," Harry explained. "It's whoever your master is. They shouldn't do that to you – they're not _allowed_ to do it to you."

"But Dobby is a house-elf," Dobby said. "Master can do whatever Master wants to Dobby."

"No, he can't," Harry replied, quiet but insistent. "We looked it up. The law says that House-Elves can be told off, or you can threaten to give them clothes-" Dobby squeaked at the very thought, "-but they can't hit you and they can't make you hurt yourself."

Dobby pulled on his ears again, looking deeply troubled. "But… but Dobby did other things as well… Dobby wanted to keep Harry Potter safe, so Dobby tried to make it so he could not get to Hogwarts, and then Dobby tried to make it so Harry Potter would have to go home, ill!"

"You did?" Harry replied, tilting his head. "When?"

"Dobby tried to make food that would make Harry Potter ill," Dobby said. "Dobby tried making a Bludger go after Harry Potter. But Dobby has run out of ideas! Dobby does not know what to do!"

"Wait, that was you?" Harry asked. "That was tasty."

Dobby blinked his big tennis-ball eyes. "Harry Potter ate the Bludger?"

"No, I mean the one with all the hemlock in," Harry clarified. "Though maybe I could have eaten the Bludger. It probably wouldn't be very tasty, though, it's just iron."

He tilted his head. "Actually, you said you want to keep me safe from something your master wants to do… what does he want to do to me, and why?"

"Dobby cannot say!" Dobby wailed. "Dobby is not allowed to say who his master is! Dobby would be a bad Dobby and have to put his ears in the mangle!"

Harry was a bit distracted by the idea that Wizards still used mangles, but shook his head. "Uh… then why does this wizard want to hurt me?"

"He hates having wizards who are not humans at Hogwarts," Dobby said, carefully now, almost as if he was trying to find out what he was allowed to say. "Dobby thinks wizards who are not humans is a good thing, but Master thinks they are bad, and he wants to hurt Harry Potter!"

"Then… hold on," Harry said, holding up a claw. "If I _left_ Hogwarts, wouldn't that mean that I'd done what he wanted anyway?"

Dobby looked crestfallen, then yelped. "But – but Harry Potter could be hurt more if he stays! The Chamber of Secrets will be opened once more-"

Dobby stopped, shocked, and Harry realized something.

"When was it first opened?" he asked, but Dobby grabbed a heavy book from Harry's trunk. He was about to start using it to beat himself over the head, but Harry stopped him by taking the book back. "Did anyone get hurt last time?"

The house-elf nodded, clearly scared, and Harry thought for a bit before asking the next question. "Was it something that Tom Riddle did when he was in school?"

Dobby fell over.

"How does Harry Potter know that name?" he asked.

"Professor Dumbledore told me in first year," Harry replied. "I actually found one of his diaries in my stuff, I'm not sure where from, but I handed it in to Dumbledore."

Dobby gaped, then flung himself at Harry and hugged him around the waist.

"Harry Potter is a great wizard!" he announced.

"Blimey," Ron said. "I didn't know a diary was that important."

Dobby froze, and Harry looked at the door. Ron was there, and so were Dean, Neville and Hermione, and it looked like either Fred or George had his head around the door as well.

"How long have you been there?" Harry asked.

"Pretty much for all of it," Dean answered.

Dobby let out a kind of_ meep_ noise and vanished with a crack.

* * *

AN:

* * *

And that's where that's ended up going.

Yes, canonically Dobby _does_ get beaten by Lucius. This is what Harry gets angry about, not the multiple pseudo-assassination attempts...


	26. A Winter's Tail

The conversation with Dobby made Harry feel upset, in a way that sort of simmered away in the background.

It wasn't like the vague feeling that it would be really nice if his friends knew what it felt like to fly on their own wings, or the melancholy sadness of not knowing his parents. He'd known that some people had a worse time than him, but this was something completely different… and something where he had no idea how to fix it.

Harry felt like it was the sort of thing that adults should solve, and he did write a letter to Sirius about it, but he couldn't really put his talon on what _should_ be done to fix it. Based on some of the books he'd read, the appropriate thing to do might be to storm into the house of whoever Dobby's master was and free him, but that didn't seem like it would be legal (or polite, if it wasn't in a book)… and he still didn't know who Dobby's master _was_.

It was sort of like he imagined it was different for someone like Frodo or Merry. They'd sort of been aware of Mordor, and other unpleasant things like that, but meeting people who'd been put in awful situations sort of made it more… real?

Harry much preferred it when everyone was basically okay, and that made him think a bit about the books he read. It seemed like something he hadn't really realized when he was reading things like the _Belgariad_ was that it was the bits _between_ the books – or _after_ them – that were the nicest times to live in. A big exciting battle was much more interesting to read about, but if you thought about it it was probably much nicer living in Riva five years after the end of the books.

* * *

The good news that came about a week into December was that the trial of Peter Pettigrew was finally over. He'd said that a lot of people had been servants of Voldemort, or Tom Riddle, but apparently it was really hard to tell who'd been under mind control and who hadn't. It sounded like anyone who'd been doing evil things _after_ Harry's parents had died had been put in prison, which was part of what happened to Sirius.

The paper said that Pettigrew had been sentenced to Azkaban, and that his cell would be specially made to make sure that even a rat couldn't get out of it.

Harry did sort of hope that was the end of it, though. He _liked_ going to magic school, and while it was nice to do other things as well it did seem like there were a lot of distractions. He wasn't at all sure what the Chamber of Secrets was, for example, even after Hermione had told him that it was meant to be a secret chamber built by Salazar Slytherin a thousand years ago with a monster inside it to rid the castle of Muggleborns.

Admittedly Harry had sort of guessed the bit about the Chamber of Secrets being a secret chamber. And Hogwarts being Hogwarts, it did seem possible there was a room that was hidden so well almost nobody could find it, but that did make him wonder how it was supposed to actually rid the castle of Muggleborns.

He did remember how the argument about whether he was allowed at Hogwarts had let him know what the official definition of "Muggleborn" was, but it did make him wonder about how you could tell without asking someone.

Was Tanisis a Muggleborn? Neither of her parents had been to a wizarding school, because they were both sphinxes, but they'd both been magical. Did that count?

What about people who were Squibs, who didn't have any magic but came from a magical family? Would someone whose grandparents were all Squibs count as muggle-born or pure-blood?

Harry wasn't sure. It seemed a lot like one of those rules that made sense when people thought it up but had sort of difficult bits around the edges.

* * *

The next day, Harry was up early. He'd seen the signs of what was about to happen, and wanted to watch.

It was the first snow day of the year, thick and soft, and it lay in drifts all over Hogwarts castle and grounds. Little powder-trails blew from the battlements as the wind stirred snow piles that had fallen overnight, the Quidditch Pitch was covered in at least six feet of snow (so could be used for Quidditch practice the same as always) and the Black Lake was frozen around the edges.

"Ah, Harry," Hagrid said, as Harry landed next to him at one of the postern doors. "Yer just in time."

Harry nodded, furling his wings, and watched as Hagrid opened the small side door.

"Hagrid!" Nora announced brightly, loping forwards in a way that made her tail ripple, and gave him a nuzzle.

Then she noticed the white stuff on the ground, and reached out a tentative paw to touch it.

"Cold?" she asked.

"That's called snow," Harry explained, and Nora slowly put her weight on her forepaw. It made a crunching noise as the snow gave way readily under her weight, until she reached the solid ground underneath.

Nora withdrew her paw, inspecting it on top and then craning her neck to look underneath, then tried eating some of the snow. That made her flinch back and shoot a jet of flame, melting a big patch of the snow, and _that_ seemed to _really_ baffle her.

"It's frozen water," Harry explained, and Nora swung her head around to look at him. "Water that's gone hard?"

He took a pawful of the snow himself, turning it into a snowball, then blew gently on it. Nora watched very closely as the snow slowly lost definition, water dribbling off it until finally there was nothing left at all.

"Snow..." she said, repeating the word Harry had used. "Cold water?"

"That's right," Harry agreed.

Picking some up, Nora licked it – more carefully this time.

Then she let out a roar, and dove at one of the bigger snowdrifts – sending white flakes flying in all directions.

* * *

The next day there was a special Astronomy lesson just before midnight for everyone who was still doing Astronomy at all, even the people who'd had it the last night. The astronomy tower was packed, and the moon overhead was faint and red – a total Lunar Eclipse.

In some of the books Harry had read an eclipse was really significant, either because it meant magic was more powerful, or less powerful, or something was disapproving of the world.

That was usually a solar eclipse, though. He asked Professor Sinistra whether there were any magical effects from a lunar eclipse, and she frowned for a long moment before saying it might confuse a few werewolves.

* * *

Unlike with his first year, Harry had to seriously think about how he was going to spend his Christmas holiday in second year.

He'd sort of worked out what to get everyone for Christmas, and was flying to Fort William when he got a chance so he could work most of that out, but that was only half of it. He could just stay at Hogwarts like he had the previous year, and like Ron was planning on doing, or he could take up Sirius' offer to come around for the whole Christmas holiday and visit.

Harry wasn't all that sure that he'd do that, because Christmas at Hogwarts was a sight to behold, but Hedwig was kept busy as he discussed it with his new uncle and it really seemed like Sirius liked the idea of spending some time together – so it sounded like it would be a good idea to do at least something.

Eventually, a week or so before the end of term, they had an idea which sounded good for both of them. Sirius suggested that maybe they should have everyone Harry wanted to invite around for a fun Boxing Day, and then after that Harry would stay over until the new year 'if we can stand living in this place for that long'."

Having met Sirius, and had a few letters from him, Harry wasn't _quite_ sure how bad it would be. It could all be jokes and it was a nice place, or it could be that only one room of the house was really habitable and they'd be camping in…

...well, Harry's tent, really.

Since that sounded like a good idea, Harry started asking his friends if they'd be available. Hermione said she'd have to ask her parents – and asked to borrow Hedwig to send them a letter – while Dean shook his head, saying apologetically that it was pretty much usual for his family to go and visit relatives over Christmas so he didn't think he'd be able to come along.

Ron and the other Weasleys (from Percy to Ginny) all sounded enthusiastic about the idea, though, and Neville liked the sound of it, so Harry let Sirius know roughly how many people to expect.

It was an odd and quite nice feeling to be inviting other people around, even if in this case it wasn't to his house. The fact the house he _was_ inviting people to was on a street called 'Grimmauld Place', though, was vaguely worrying.

The Black family _had_ apparently included all sorts of shady people, though. And Draco's mum.

* * *

At the final Quidditch practice before the end of term, Harry was sort of anticipating a long and slightly cold series of practice games in the snow which – for all that flying was pretty fun – would be a bit of a slog simply because everyone else would be getting cold and a bit miserable.

Oliver surprised them all, however, by informing everyone that they'd be using the snow to practice falling. That was a bit confusing, and he elaborated that there were some basic levitation spells – they only lifted you up a few feet and stopped working if you were too high up, but you could use them to slow down how hard you hit the ground.

His idea was that if anyone did end up having to hit the ground, they'd hopefully be able to at least sort of "roll" with it.

In the event, it was great fun. The snow was thick enough that everybody could land in it without getting hurt, and the idea of using the levitation spells quickly went away as instead everyone flew low to dive off their brooms and crunch into the thick drifts.

Then an airborne snowball fight started, which quickly became even more confusing when the Smith twins turned out to have been hiding under the snow. Oliver was briefly worried about spying, until Katie pointed out that if the Slytherins were spying on their training they wouldn't get any use of it at least until next year and that the more likely explanation involved the ongoing and increasingly public prank war.

Fred and George won that particular round, largely by using their wands to lift vast amounts of snow and completely plaster the area the Smiths were hiding. Harry wondered if they would turn into foxes to burrow out, but realized that they probably wouldn't let themselves get found out even if they did.

* * *

During the last Herbology lesson of the term, Harry asked Justin what _his_ plans were for Christmas.

"Oh, well, I'm not really sure," Justin admitted, trimming the flowers off a Giant Hogweed. One of the flower clusters fell the wrong way, and Harry caught it before it could hit Justin's arm below his gloves. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Harry replied, putting it in the basket they'd been using. "Want me to grab that stalk that's at the back?"

Justin nodded, and Harry pulled the stalk down so Justin could reach it with the secateurs.

"Mother's said that we might be going to visit relatives," Justin clarified. "I'm not entirely sure how that's going to go if it's my cousin once removed, he went to Eton and he was really hoping I'd do the same."

"What have you told him?" Harry asked.

"We've just said it's an exclusive Scots boarding school, which is certainly true," Justin replied. "The trouble is if he wants to know what we _learn_ here..."

Harry nodded. "I can see that," he agreed. "I'm not sure what my Aunt and Uncle would say if they got asked where I go for school… actually, they've probably already been asked."

"Oh, I remember this," Justin mused. "They don't like magic at all?"

"Not at all," Harry nodded, as they finished trimming the Giant Hogweed. "I think they just wanted to be perfectly normal, but I think everybody's a bit odd really."

"All right, everyone!" Professor Sprout called. "If anyone got touched by the Hogweed, please come up here and I can give you the potion that counteracts the poisons!"

* * *

It was odd, when Harry thought about it, but the thing he liked about Christmas was not _getting_ presents so much as _giving_ them. Both were new experiences for him, or mostly new experiences – he had got a _few_ presents at Privet Drive – but it was overall more pleasant to see how much people enjoyed what he got them than it was even to get something particularly good.

Maybe it was just because he could buy most things that he wanted – he didn't have any particularly expensive tastes except for books, and even then the spell Hermione had taught him let him stay quite well-supplied. It would probably mean he'd have a very big hoard eventually.

In any case, that meant that – despite the days leading up to Christmas proper leaving Hogwarts festooned in snow outside and decorations inside, with a snow-whatever making contest one day and a snowball fight the next that involved almost the entirety of the remaining student body – Harry was actually impatient for Christmas.

On the night of Christmas Eve, the normal four tables in the Great Hall had all been pushed together into a big rectangle for dinner instead of forming four long lines. June and her entire extended family came to visit, two dozen Wargs all enjoying a slap-up feast with the Hogwarts inhabitants as the snow fell gently outside, and Professor Lockhart turned out to be quite good at casting Charms that sent sparkling bubbles of gold and pearl floating around the Great Hall.

Harry wondered if silver ones would have been vaguely insulting to the Wargs, but that was sort of an idle thing. The rest of the time he was enjoying his food, and listening to a conversation going on a little to the right where June was translating for her father on one side and Professor Kettleburn on the other.

It was interesting that the Wargs didn't have their own language _as such_, they'd started out speaking English, but the difficulty they had saying the words with their lupine mouths had sort of naturally led to a drift towards a more wolf-like way of speaking.

It did explain why it had been so easy for June to quickly learn English, though.

* * *

Christmas morning dawned bright and clear, and Harry yawned and stretched before sitting up on his bed with his tail twitching.

Ron was still asleep, and Harry checked the time. It seemed like it was time for presents as far as he was concerned, and he knew Ron hadn't got to bed too late last night.

He could try shaking Ron awake… or he could try a simple, harmless prank. Nothing like what Fred and George sometimes did, and certainly nothing like Sirius had occasionally mentioned he and the other Marauders had done to people.

But he did kind of like this idea…

* * *

Eventually, Ron yawned, rolling over in bed.

"Mrf..." he mumbled. "Not time to get up yet..."

Harry waited, wings slightly furling and unfurling, and then Ron noticed.

"Bloody hell!" he yelped, jumping to his feet. "_Aguamenti!_"

A spray of water doused his merrily burning bed, and the water didn't do anything to the bright blue flames.

Harry tried not to giggle.

"...prat," Ron muttered, shaking his head, and dispelled Harry's bluebell flames with a muttered _Finite_. "How long ago did you do that?"

"Twenty minutes," Harry admitted.

"Yeah, okay, that's pretty funny," Ron allowed, tapping his model griffin to wake it up. "What's the time… blimey, I slept in."

"I thought that would wake you up pretty quickly," Harry replied, inspecting Ron's presents to make sure none of them had got wet. "Then I just sort of… waited, because it was funnier to watch."

"I'd probably have done the same thing," Ron admitted. "...I probably will do the same thing. Possibly to Fred and George."

He picked out a present from the pile at the end of his bed. "Blimey, this one's big… wonder who it's from?"

"That's me," Harry answered, opening one of his own presents. It was the one from his Aunt and Uncle, and it was a toothpick.

Harry wondered if they had some sort of unmentioned financial problem.

There was a great tearing noise as Ron tore off the paper from his present, and his griffin dove into the papers and began to make a nest out of them.

Ron was too busy gaping at the box.

"It's some model rockets," Harry explained happily. "Not fireworks – they're more serious than that. I found some that were reusable if you could get the right fuel, and I think we use everything it takes to make them as potions ingredients."

"Cripes," Ron said, turning it around to look at the back. "How high do they go?"

"Not sure," Harry admitted. "I did get the biggest ones I could find, though."

"That makes the thing I got kind of pathetic," Ron replied, sounding a bit gloomy.

"Honestly, I'm just happy to get you something," Harry told his friend, and removed the paper.

It was a book about the Chudley Cannons. Harry was quite pleased by it, telling Ron that of course getting him a book he hadn't read yet was perfectly fine. (He thought it was probably going to be quite funny, but he didn't say that because he wanted to be polite.)

Hermione had got him a sort of reference book about Muggle stories about dragons, which was somewhat understandably called The Book Of The Dragon, and a little note told him that this way it would be A Book Of A Dragon. Then Neville had got something neat as well, an enchanted bookstand which would turn the pages for you if you told it to go forwards or back.

Dean's present for Harry was a stuffed toy – a deer – which Ron snorted at at first until hearing that it was the first time Harry had ever actually owned one, and then he went a bit quiet and opened his own gift from Dean. That was a set of table football characters, repackaged, but because Dean had painted them all in Chudley Cannons vivid orange.

Putting the stuffed toy by his bedside with his other things, Harry was about to move on when Ron coughed.

"What did you get the others?" he asked. "I hope you didn't really splash out just for me..."

"Well, I wasn't sure what to get Hagrid, at first, because the shops in Fort William don't sell exotic creatures and he's a bit big for most Muggle clothes," Harry replied, starting to count off on his talons. "So I got him some chocolates, and I also sent him a Haggis for Nora. Then for Hermione I found something that lets you emboss books with your own little markings, so she can mark books she's got as hers."

He nodded over at two of the empty beds, as Dean, Neville and Seamus had all gone home for the holidays. "I got Dean a West Ham shirt, then I asked Professor Flitwick to charm it so it'll change sizes and always fit him. He was very nice about it… and Neville was kind of tricky, but I found a book in the Ravenclaw library about learning sword fighting."

Ron blinked, tilting his head sightly in a way Harry sort of recognized as one of his own mannerisms. "You gave him a library book?"

"No, I couldn't have done that," Harry replied. "Besides, it was in… I think it was Latin or something? But I talked to Professor Flitwick about it and got permission to take it into Fort William, and I photocopied all the pages with a Muggle machine."

Harry paused, waiting to see if Ron would get it, and after a moment the other boy's eyes widened.

"You made a Muggle book out of it," he realized. "And then you translated it?"

"Yeah, I've got about thirty duff translations lying around my hoard," Harry agreed. "I think one of them is in Quenya. But I got an English one as well, and that's what I sent."

"You don't do this presents thing by halves, do you?" Ron said, shaking his head. "I'm almost afraid to ask what you got your Aunt and Uncle."

"I got them a nice book with pictures of Scottish lakes," Harry replied. "Or Lochs? I'm not sure if English people like us are supposed to say Lochs."

"I really don't get why you're so nice to them," Ron muttered. "They're not very nice to you."

"Well, I've never actually felt like they did anything _bad_ to me," Harry replied, and started thinking about it. "Maybe that's because they couldn't, but still. And there are people who have done worse, like Tom Riddle."

He shrugged. "I just… like to think everybody is nice at first. Maybe that means I'm disappointed sometimes, but it seems nicer to me."

* * *

After that slightly odd conversation, Harry opened the rest of his presents.

Sirius hadn't sent him a present, but had told him that he'd be getting his present at Grimmauld Place because that way he could see Harry's reaction. Harry sort of wished he'd thought of that, but what he'd actually got Sirius was several _Asterix_ books because Sirius seemed like he needed a good laugh.

Remus had sent Harry a collection of the old notes the Marauders had had when they were in school, detailing some of the odd things they'd got up to, and apologized for not getting a more traditional present. That made Harry feel quite sad, especially as what he'd got _Remus_ was a kit for taking care of the fur of a dog (with a letter saying he wasn't sure if it was Sirius or Remus who actually needed it more). He'd also thought to mention that it would have helped a lot of First-Years coming to Hogwarts if they'd been able to buy or look at a map that showed the Castle, even if it didn't show any of the properly secret secret passages, and asked if Remus had any ideas about that.

It was one of those times when Harry was quite proud of being a little bit sneaky, because Remus and Sirius could probably make a copy of the Marauder's Map with _less_ abilities, and that way they would have something that they could sell to all the first-year students at Hogwarts.

Rather than a second Weasley jumper, Mrs. Weasley had sent an apology note for not knowing how much Harry had grown over the last year along with a striped red and gold scarf. Harry quite liked the scarf, and wound it around his neck so the fringed ends dangled to his waist.

The last thing Harry got to was a present from Dumbledore, which was a pair of very nicely knitted socks patterned with moving flames that seemed to alternately burn up the entire sock before dying down to embers.

Harry was really quite pleased with how the morning had gone.

* * *

The Christmas Feast was just as wonderfully made as it had been last year, with sugary snow drifting gently down from the ceiling and all kinds of unusual foods to try, but on top of everything that Harry had seen last year there were a few new things as well.

There were foods from other parts of the world that brought a little taste of an Egyptian or Greek Christmas (Harry especially liked the odd bread, rice, lamb and garlic soup), then there was an indoors fireworks display by Professors Dumbledore and Flitwick under the warm, dry enchanted snow, and between the main courses and the pudding a dozen students stood up to give the first performance of the Hogwarts Choir.

They did _Jingle Bells_ very well, Harry thought, and_ Come All Ye Faithful_ as well. By the time they got to doing _Simple Gifts_ he was actually tearing up a little – this was _much_ more like what he'd imagined music at Hogwarts would be like, compared to the school song.

Then everyone joined in with _We Wish You a Merry Christmas_, and as that came to an end the puddings appeared.

* * *

The next morning, after a night packing his things into his tent and then sleeping in the tent, Harry took the Floo from Professor McGonagall's office to Twelve Grimmauld Place.

Green fire swirled all around him, fireplaces whizzing past in that odd way the Floo did, and then Harry came out all at once and flared his wings – which _almost_ stopped him tripping over and falling to the floor with a crash.

"Harry!" Sirius said, sounding concerned, and Harry shook himself as he got up. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Harry assured him. "I just don't get on very well with the Floo."

"You should have said," Sirius replied. "I could have Apparated to pick you up."

Behind Harry, there was a _whoosh_ as Ginny came through the Floo, and Harry took a moment to look Sirius up and down.

His hair was long, but washed, and had ended up as a sort of shaggy mane. There were a few grey hairs mixed into it, but they didn't look _bad_ really, and he'd also filled out a bit and looked generally healthier. The change was enough that Harrry could see freedom was agreeing with him, and there was a light in his eyes – like he'd been enjoying himself for the first time in years.

"Apparating doesn't work at Hogwarts, Sirius," Remus pointed out.

"And it doesn't work on me, either," Harry added. "Professor Dumbledore and I think it's my magic resistance."

"Fair enough," Sirius said, then stepped back a pace and bowed as Ron arrived. "And welcome to the home of the Most Ancient And Noble House of Black! Welcome to Grimmauld Place!"

He paused. "Just… don't go upstairs. Or downstairs. We've spent the last month clearing out this floor and we think we got everything that might get us first."

* * *

Neville arrived about twenty minutes later, just ahead of Hermione. Hermione's parents had taken her by Tube, planning to go into the City for the day, and Neville had just taken the Floo like Harry himself and the Weasleys.

Hermione's arrival led to a quite amazing amount of shouting from a very loud and rude portrait in the hall, which Sirius said was of his terribly unpleasant mother. She called Hermione a 'Mudblood', Sirius a 'wastrel' and Harry a '...what?'

Harry didn't feel like being polite to her, so he just explained that he was a dragon and then pulled the curtain shut.

"I know she's your mother, but that's terribly rude," Hermione said. "I didn't think anyone actually said 'Mudblood', I thought it was only in books. How long has she been like that?"

"All my life. But if you mean the portrait, at least for the last few months," Sirius replied. "I think there's a permanent sticking charm keeping the portrait in place. I've tried everything."

"I caught him trying to use his wand to lever the portrait off the wall," Remus confided. "At that point I think it really is everything."

Hermione frowned. "I think at least people without magic can just ignore their relatives," she said. "It's a lot harder when they're stuck to the wall."

"I'd say I wanted to just ignore _all_ my relatives, but Andy and her family are all right," Sirius shrugged. "Plus, if you look far enough just about everyone in Pureblood society is related to the Blacks _somewhere_."

"Glad you could make it, Hermione," Neville called. "Did you get the warning about where you can't go yet?"

Hermione looked over at them, and Harry answered first. "Upstairs, I think?"

"Or downstairs," Sirius added. "From what I've been hearing about you, Harry, you _might_ be okay, but I've heard there's Boggarts around and I don't want to see what your worst fear is."

Harry actually wasn't sure what his worst fear would be. Maybe something from a book?

Or did it have to be a real thing?

* * *

With Hermione, that was everyone, and once they were out of the hallway Sirius clapped his hands.

"All right, everyone!" he said. "Come to the drawing room!"

Fred and George exchanged looks.

"I thought we were already in the drawing room," Fred said. "Or is the drawing room a room you use for drawing?"

"That sounds more like Dean's thing," Ron interrupted. "Pity he couldn't make it, if so."

"It can't be that, unless the easels are being hidden somewhere," George replied. "He said _come_ to the drawing room. So this is the drawing room."

"I still don't understand why he'd want us to come here," Fred shrugged.

"I think Padfoot might be slipping," George agreed.

"Since you two want to argue," Sirius said, pointing at first one twin and then the other. "You two can go into the kitchen, and then come back into the drawing room."

"We asked for that, Fred," Fred said.

"That we did, George," George confirmed.

Remus started to choke.

"Are you okay, M-Mr. Lupin?" Sirius asked. "Something go down the wrong way?"

"I'm just thinking about Marauder twins," Remus explained, coughing a few more times. "I feel sorry for Professor McGonagall and the rest already."

* * *

After the Twins had trooped out to the kitchen and then back in, Sirius waved his wand and lit up the sparkling lights on a big pine tree that looked like it shouldn't have fit through the door.

"Merry Christmas!" he announced. "Now, in case some of you don't know who I am, well done for not reading the Daily Prophet. My name is Sirius Black, and this is my acquaintance Remus Lupin. I used to be in prison, but I got better."

"Do you mean you got let out?" Neville asked, frowning. "I thought it was an _illness_ you got better from."

"Well, being in prison did seem to be contagious," Sirius shrugged, teeth flashing in a grin that made him look years younger. "Everyone I met had it for quite a long time. Anyway, it is my distinct pleasure to have inherited an enormous amount of money from one of the most prominent Dark Families in the country, and to have not one single _moment_ for any of that blood purity nonsense."

He swept his hand around, taking in all the children present from Ginny to Percy. "So if you think your present cost too much, it didn't. It really didn't. Think of it as… as… how long was I in Azkaban, again?"

"Eleven years, give or take," Remus supplied.

"Eleven years' worth of spoiling my godson, spread out across all of you," Sirius summarized. "Now, who wants to go first?"

* * *

As it turned out, Sirius had sort of had to guess what people would find interesting, and he'd based it off his own deep knowledge of what teenagers were into. That meant that there were four Nimbus Two Thousand And Ones, which went to Fred, George, Harry and Ron, and after the fourth one was opened Ginny raised her hand.

"Are they all going to be top line brooms?" she asked.

"I'm not _that_ uncreative," Sirius replied, sounding hurt.

"You are that uncreative," Remus said. "You wanted your Marauder name to be Doggy."

"Hey, nobody needs to know that!" Sirius protested. "Anyway, no, that's all the brooms."

"That doesn't seem very fair," Ginny said. "Why do all the brooms go to the boys?"

"Well, I know Harry's in the Gryffindor Quidditch Team," Sirius checked off. "And the same for the Twins. And as for Ron… well… it was that or get him a replacement for Peter, and I couldn't think of a good pet to get him."

Remus snorted.

"Hey, none of that," Sirius told him. "And on another note entirely, this one's yours."

He waved his wand, and the cover came off a small cage. The cage turned out to contain an extremely hyperactive little owl who began chirping as soon as the cover was off, and Ginny did a double-take as the cage floated over to her.

"Hold on," she said, frowning. "You couldn't think of a good pet to get Ron. But you did get a pet for me."

"Yes," Sirius agreed. "That's it exactly."

Hermione tapped Ginny on the shoulder. "At this point I usually find it helpful to huff and say 'boys'," she confided.

"Boys," Ginny huffed. "Wow, thanks, Hermione, that _is_ good!"

"I'll get you a broom next year, when you're actually allowed one?" Sirius suggested. "I am guessing here, I'll be totally honest."

Ginny looked like she was thinking about it, and she opened the cage door to let the little owl out. It immediately began circling her head, making several circuits before finally landing on her knee – where it stayed for about a second before taking off again, hovering more like a hummingbird than an owl.

"Why did you get such a hyper one?" Ron asked, as the owl started hunting around. Harry wondered if it was looking for a letter to deliver.

"I'm sure I had a very good reason," Sirius told him. "Unfortunately, I can't remember for the life of me what it was..."

"He is growing on me," Ginny admitted. "I'll see if I can think of a name."

"What about Snitch?" Ron suggested. "He's about as bouncy as one.

Sirius snapped his fingers. "That's right! It was because it was funny. Forgot about that."

* * *

Hermione got a bag that was bigger on the inside, which Sirius said was fitted with shelves, and Percy's present was something that Sirius described as 'chosen by Remus' – an enormous quantity of Muggle-style stationery.

Percy ultimately turned out to have eight reams of high-quality paper, half lined and half unlined, two dozen Muggle pens and forty pencils, a complete set of coloured highlighters, plenty of spare ink, and several ring-binders to keep the whole thing together.

When the while pile was laid out, Ron blinked. "That… uh… not to sound ungrateful on Perce's behalf, or anything, but that seems kind of… dull… to me."

"I think it's great," Percy replied.

He looked around at his astonished brothers – and one sister – then smiled. "I know. It's kind of boring, just what you'd expect. But this is going to make it so much easier to keep everything organized."

A shrug. "Besides, I don't think I'd want a broom. I'm not very good at Quidditch, and the only reason I know as much as I do is because I've spent more than five years in the same dorm room as Oliver Wood."

"He's got a point," Fred said.

"He's got forty of them," George countered, pointing at the pencils.

"No, they're not sharpened yet," Fred replied.

Sirius said he had an idea for what to get Dean, as well, and then asked everyone what they thought of what they had – and whether there was anything they wanted to change.

"I'm afraid you can't really try out the brooms today," he added. "But if any of them turn out to be duff, just let me know and I'll sort it out."

"This is… crazily generous, Mr. Black," Ron said. "I don't even..."

He shook his head, looking at his new Nimbus.

"Well, then," Sirius added. "It sounds like it's time for lunch."

"It's only about eleven in the morning," Remus pointed out.

"It sounds like it's time for brunch," Sirius corrected himself.

* * *

Much to Harry's surprise, the food that Remus had got them was not only fundamentally Muggle but what he'd heard referred to as 'party food'.

There were little cut sandwiches, cocktail sausages, little slices of pizza and plates of onion rings, chicken nuggets, sausage rolls and odd little breaded things that turned out to be full of cheese. There were garlic mushrooms, cut pork pies, lamb kebabs, donuts, slices of cake and eclairs, all mixed up together on the same table.

"I thought about trying to put together a big, impressive meal," Sirius said, getting out a dozen silver plates from one of the cupboards. "But then I decided not to, because the whole point of this is to kind of poke my awful family in the eye."

"I'm not sure how long you can keep doing that," Hermione frowned, taking a plate and starting with a mini pasty, three onion rings and some carrots on sticks. "Before it gets boring, I mean… or unhealthy, at least."

"I'm still going through the stages of coping," Sirius told her. "Besides, eating Muggle food like this off the Black Family Silverware is its own reward."

Harry got a box of old motorcycle parts to nibble on – apparently Sirius had been making himself a second flying motorcycle – and then Remus got out an old Wizarding board game about a game of Quidditch.

Interestingly, it was about a _specific_ game of Quidditch – the monumentally foul-ridden Flanders-Transylvania World Cup final of 1473 – and everyone divided into teams to play what was basically a kind of battle game as much as it was about sports.

There wasn't an option to release a live dragon onto the field, though.

* * *

The afternoon was a kind of cozy, pleasant experience.

Sirius dug out a wireless which he left on at a low volume, Remus had plenty of other board games to play from a strategy-battle game to one where everyone was trying to build a tower together.

None of them were really all _that_ good at any of the games, which was half the fun, as everyone argued over what they should do on their turn and then it all went horribly wrong anyway. It reminded Harry a _bit_ of the times he'd enjoyed playing games with Dudley, during the times when Dudley hadn't been able to get one of his friends to come around, but with so many more of them and… without Harry being sort of the last choice, anyway.

There was a quiz game, and because it was a Muggle copy of Trivial Pursuit that meant it was essentially a three-way contest between Hermione, Remus and Percy. That was okay, though, because Sirius just put one of them on each team and mixed everyone else up so all the teams had someone who knew something on them.

Then there was one where they were trying to get their explorers through a valley full of dinosaurs and lava, which wasn't quite as interesting until Ron had an idea and animated his little griffin statue. It promptly carried one of his explorers off, which put him out a bit, but soon the game turned into a frantic race for _someone_ to get the treasure before the griffin stole all the pieces.

* * *

At about four in the afternoon, just after they'd spent half an hour making up their own much simpler rules for a preposterously complicated Muggle war game and decided that in the battle between "Axis" and "Allies" the winner had been "the griffin again", Sirius cleared his throat.

"All right," he said. "So it's time to talk about the big black dog in the room."

"Is there a big black dog in the room?" Percy asked. "I haven't seen it."

Fred and George gaped at him.

"Perce," Fred began. "Are you being obtuse?"

"Or are you being deadpan?" George followed up.

"Or do you just not know?" Fred finished.

"Know what?" Percy asked.

Sirius turned into Padfoot.

"Oh, that," Percy added. "Yes, actually. Why?"

"I think we've been played, Fred," George said.

Percy adjusted his robes, smiling a little.

Turning back to his human form, Sirius indicated himself. "So. I'm an Animagus. So was Harry's dad, and so was… the one we don't speak about unless there's no alternative."

"So you mean He Who Must Not Be Named?" Ginny asked.

"No, the other one," Sirius told him.

"The names Wizards use for things are a bit confusing," Harry said. "Why can't we just call Tom Riddle Tom Riddle?"

"I think that is a good idea, Harry," Sirius said, pleasingly. "But if we called the rat You Know Who and Tom Riddle Tom Riddle, it might make people think the rat was the person who everyone else thinks of as You Know Who and who we think of as Tom Riddle and they wouldn't know Tom Riddle was He Who Must Not Be Named."

He stopped, and mouthed words to himself for several seconds before shaking his head. "I think that was right."

"Hermione?" Ron checked.

"I think it made sense," Hermione agreed.

"So, anyway!" Sirius resumed. "Here's the thing that I want to discuss."

He pointed at Harry. "Obviously, I'm most concerned for the safety of my godson, but Harry is by all accounts _preposterously_ hard to hurt so I probably shouldn't be. But you're all his friends, in some way, and you're also all Gryffindors so if anyone's likely to run in if he gets in a dangerous situation it's you. And that Dean kid, I haven't forgotten him."

Sirius steepled his fingers together and pushed them away from him, making a little _krak_ sound. "So. Who wants to be an Animagus?"

"That sounds really cool," Ginny blurted, then blushed. "I mean, um..."

"Hey, there's no need to be embarrassed by that reaction," Sirius assured her. "That was about how I reacted when James told me he and Remus had managed to work out the process."

Remus nodded. "I have a disability that means I can't become one," he added. "But there's four main things you need in order to become an Animagus, if you don't have something that prevents you from doing it at all."

He counted on his fingers. "Firstly, you need willpower. That's both something you need to manage the transformation, and something you need for one of the essential components of the process – a mandrake leaf you need to hold in your mouth for an entire month, from full moon to full moon."

He went on to explain the whole process. The mandrake leaf was necessary for a potion which was personalized to the witch or wizard, and the potion then had to wait for a lightning storm. There was a spell to cast twice a day at sunrise and sunset during the waiting period, and then finally during the lightning storm the potion had to be drunk.

There were several things about it that could go wrong, but they were mostly about the last two steps – the spell and actually drinking the potion during the storm. Harry was mostly listening for interest, but he did put up his paw to ask a question.

"Go ahead, Harry," Remus smiled at him. "This isn't a class, I'm not your professor."

"Is this one of those times astronomy matters for magic?" Harry asked. "You mentioned the full moon a few times, and how it had to be a full moon with the moon visible for the potion to work, and then there was that spell at sunrise and sunset."

"It's quite possible," Remus admitted. "Though I'm not sure if it affects anything else. James, Sirius and Peter all became quite different things when they first transformed."

"Any idea what one of us might be?" Fred asked.

"Or two of us, for that matter!" George added. "Would George and I be the same thing?"

"That's a good question," Remus said.

After a long pause, and just when Fred looked like he was about to ask for the answer, Sirius took over. "So! No need to decide on it now, but think about it. Officially, you'd have to register, of course."

"Can you move somewhere else part way through the process?" Hermione said, looking down at some notes she'd taken. "There are places where the weather is really reliably clear – like at Hogwarts, if you use the Astronomy Tower for having the full moon bit – and there are places where there are thunderstorms all the time. I think there's somewhere in Africa where there's a thunderstorm on two out of every three days in the year…"

Sirius pointed at Hermione. "Why didn't we have her when we were doing this? It took two months of waiting to get a thunderstorm!"

"That would be because of time, Sirius," Remus sighed. "She's a bit young to have been at Hogwarts the same time as us."

"Oh, yeah, good point," Sirius agreed.

* * *

Everyone thought becoming an Animagus would be at least somewhat neat, but there were risks too and so it didn't seem like a good idea to rush into it. Percy did seem quite contemplative of the idea, though, and Harry remembered that – if they were assuming that Hogwarts would make the process much easier with guaranteed clear full moons – Percy would only have this year and next year to do it unless he came back just for that.

That discussion took them through to dinner, and Remus went out to get it – it turned out that this was another part of the plan Sirius had to be as 'Muggle' as possible, because what he brought in was the first time any of them except Hermione had had Chinese Takeaway.

The dozen or so little foil boxes with cardboard lids contained all sorts of odd foods like special fried rice, sweet and sour chicken and spring rolls, and the three-or-four bags with extra things like prawn toast and onion bhaji all went down very well, everybody trying to have a little bit of everything to find out what they liked best, and it seemed to Harry like Hermione spent half her time telling everyone what everything actually was.

Harry didn't have much at first, trying a bit of things like the bhajis and the prawn toast, and about halfway through the meal Sirius came around to sit next to him.

"Are you okay, Harry?" he asked. "You don't seem to be eating enough. Did I get the wrong thing?"

"No, it's really tasty," Harry assured him, worried that he'd given Sirius the wrong impression. "But I can eat the aluminium foil as well, so I can have any of the boxes that everybody else has already had most of the stuff out of."

Sirius snorted. "We used to joke about Craddock being the House dustbin – that's someone who was a year below us," he clarified. "Fantastic Beater, massive appetite, he kept asking to finish anything someone had put on their plate but hadn't finished. But it sounds like you could eat the plates as well."

"Maybe," Harry replied, thinking about it. "Gold seems like an expensive taste to have, though."

Sirius chuckled.

"I wanted to check, Harry," he went on. "Your friends are going home after dinner, but you're staying for a few days?"

Harry nodded.

"Good," Sirius said, sounding relieved. "I'm… still not very good at this uncle thing."

He snorted slightly. "I was all set to help you learn to walk or give you your first broom flight… not really something you need help with now."

"I actually took a really long time to get to where I could ride a broom properly," Harry confided, spreading his wings a little to indicate them. "I can fly with the wings, I learned that when I was six, but flying with wings _and_ a broom was… a bit harder. Madam Hooch started me off on two brooms."

"Rolanda Hooch is still the flying instructor?" Sirius asked, before snagging a spring roll. "She taught us."

"I think Hogwarts teachers do that," Harry guessed. "Wizards live a long time, and there aren't all _that_ many people who are good enough at a subject to teach it."

"This is really good," Ron said, loudly enough to get Harry's attention. "Hogwarts food is good, too, but this is a different kind of thing. Why can't they do this stuff?"

"Maybe they will if we ask," Fred mused. "I don't imagine house-elves at Hogwarts have much experience with Muggle takeout."

"Well, it's hard to blame them, Fred," George said. "We don't have much experience with Muggle takeout, and we're men of the world."

"Boys," Hermione sighed.

"Boys of the world," George corrected himself.

"The only question is..." Fred began, then trailed off.

George gave him a look.

"Well?" he asked. "I don't know where you were going with that. I can think of at least three questions, and one of them is about how they'd decide how hot to make it."

"I was going to ask how we get them some takeout to experience," Fred said. "Any ideas, anyone?"

"Why can't you just get them some cookbooks?" Ginny asked. "That seems obvious enough to me."

"By Jove, I think she's got it!" George gasped.

"Who's Jove?" Fred replied. "And why do you want to buy him?"

* * *

Finally, the time came for everyone to head home. Hermione left out the front door, which prompted another round of shouting from the portrait of Sirius' mother, and the Weasleys filed one by one through the Floo to get back to Hogwarts.

Neville left by the Floo as well, saying goodbye to Harry, and then he and the two Marauders were alone in Grimmauld Place.

"How do you think that went?" Sirius asked, looking hopeful.

"I think it was great," Harry replied, tail flicking a little and occasionally thumping against the floor.

"That's good," Sirius said, relaxing a bit. "That's… yeah, I wasn't sure how it was going to go. I've never done anything like that before, except a couple of boozy meetings after we graduated from Hogwarts."

"That was before I caught Responsibility," Remus contributed, and Sirius laughed.

When he'd mostly stopped – though he did still giggle a bit – he rubbed his hands together. "Okay, Harry! So what do you want to do for the rest of the evening? We've got some sleeping bags, and the sofa's not bad… Remus and I have been doing it, but if you'd rather not we could head back to Remus' place… though that would be pretty crowded as well."

"You could stay with me," Harry suggested, going over to get his tent. "I thought I mentioned that in one of the letters?"

"You probably did," Sirius agreed readily. "My memory's not the best, Henry."

It was a bit of a stupid joke, but Harry found it so funny he nearly snorted flame.

* * *

A few minutes later the tent was up, and Sirius and Remus had a good-natured argument about which room each of them was going to sleep in. Harry checked on Hedwig, making sure she'd had enough to eat and drink, then sat down at the kitchen table to write out a letter to Dean about the topics they'd discussed – everything from Animagus things to how Sirius wanted to meet him – and also mentioned Sirius' mother's portrait and how much trouble they were having with it.

Looking over it again, Harry decided that he'd covered what he had to, and blew on the ink to dry it before folding it up for Hedwig.

"Don't forget," he added. "If he's got relatives around or he's not in, don't fly to him and give it to him. That might look suspicious."

Hedwig cuffed him with her wing, making a _prek_ noise, and Harry chuckled.

"Maybe you could put it though the letterbox?" he suggested. His owl nodded, contriving to roll her eyes, and Harry had the distinct sense he was telling her something she already knew.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Owls can't eyeroll, but that's why Hedwig had to contrive it.

I've seen some complaints about how not much is happening, and at least one sexually explicit review as well. The latter especially is quite upsetting, but in both cases I'd like to point out that Harry is a twelve year old schoolboy.

If Harry was getting involved in serious, dangerous situations it would be because of a general failure on at least some level by the people who are acting _in loco parentis_.

With that being said, however, events are eventuating...


	27. Siriusness Has Its Place

Harry had a good night's sleep.

He sort of wondered sometimes whether he should be having meaningful dreams, they happened a lot in the fantasy books he read, but he couldn't remember having any and that seemed like the sort of thing he'd notice.

Without any meaningful dreams, though, he didn't wake up until about seven in the morning – whereupon he yawned, stretched, and wandered out into the kitchen to get some breakfast.

Picking up a cereal packet from the cupboard, Harry poured himself out about half a bowl of Cheerios along with a plastic water squirter. The water squirter he frowned at, but then decided it would just mean some more plastic in his diet and that was probably good or something.

* * *

"Morning, Harry," Sirius said, some minutes later. "Have you got any tea?"

"I got some to try," Harry replied, scooping up the last bits of plastic and cereal with his spoon. "There's some peppermint tea?"

"Not really my taste," Sirius decided. "Still, it's your kitchen."

He sat down at the table, and groaned. "I'm not awake enough yet."

"Bad night's sleep?" Harry asked.

"Just tired from dealing with so many kids yesterday," Sirius mumbled into his hands. "I think I just realized I'm not twenty any more."

"You're not that old, Padfoot," Remus called from the bedroom he was using.

"That's what I told myself," Sirius replied. "But I'm refusing to listen, which is very impolite of me."

* * *

Ten minutes later, and after having some toast, Sirius seemed a bit more awake.

"Okay, Harry," he said, gesturing with one of the crusts he'd cut off his toast. "Just so you know, the rest of this house is basically dreadful. A lot of what's here is really dangerous, but you're a dragon so you should be okay if you're careful."

Harry nodded.

"Dumbledore asked me to check on a couple of things for him, because I know _some_ of how it works, and Remus wanted to see how good you are at spellcasting," Sirius went on. "But we've got all Christmas Holiday to handle that stuff and honestly it'll probably take a few hours."

"Finding out how good Harry is will take a few hours," Remus corrected. "Doing anything else will take longer."

"Good point," Sirius nodded. "So, what do you want to do first?"

"Well..." Harry began. "Does this place have a library?"

Remus chuckled.

"Yes, but it's mostly full of books about Dark Magic," Sirius told him. "You know, horrible things like curses and hexes and jinxes and dark rituals… and historical romance novels, my mother really liked those, there's at least fifty of them and they all have the exact same plot."

"Which is worse?" Remus asked his friend.

"Definitely the romance novels," Sirius replied easily.

"Well, I could help you clear out some of the next floor up?" Harry suggested. "Then after lunch we could do one of those things you talked about that Dumbledore mentioned. Or we could go out into London to do something, though it is just after Christmas so I'm not sure how many places will be open."

"I'm starting to think I didn't really think this idea through," Sirius mused. "It sounded so simple before I actually thought about the problems that come from trying to live in this stupid place."

He paused. "Not your tent, Harry. This isn't a stupid place."

Harry had been fairly sure that that was what Sirius had meant, but it was good to get a confirmation.

* * *

When Harry led the way out of his tent, there was a ragged-looking house-elf peering at it and poking one of the slack guy ropes. He had nothing on but a loincloth, had some scraggly white hair growing out of his ears, and a deep hunch.

"Stupid Master," the house-elf muttered to himself. "Tents don't go indoors, they go outdoors. Bringing in _children…_ he should have stayed in prison, oh, my poor mistress, if she knew… new master's dirty habitses..."

"Good morning," Harry said.

The house-elf jumped, then stared.

"What is a dragon doing in my mistress' house?" the elf demanded. "Stupid dragon… dragons get used for potions ingredients-"

"Creature!" Sirius bellowed. "What did you just say?"

"Is this something all House-Elves do?" Harry asked, tilting his head. "I've only really met three, but two of them have done death threats."

Saying that seemed to get the attention of both Sirius and the house-elf, who Harry assumed was called Kreacher or Creature or something like that.

"I'm a bit confused about why wizards like to keep them, actually," Harry went on, as he wondered about that. "Though the times when that other elf tried to hurt me really weren't very good, and house-elves _do_ do really good cooking, so maybe it's just that wizards don't mind the attempted assassinations if the cooking is good?"

It certainly sounded like the sort of thing people did in Ankh-Morpork.

"...Kreacher does not know what the dragon is talking about," Kreacher said eventually.

"Oh, are you sort of like Gollum?" Harry asked. "Gollum sometimes talks about himself in the third person, and you look a bit like I imagine Gollum looks."

"What?" Sirius blinked. "Who's Gollum? That doesn't sound like a house elf name."

"Oh, no, Gollum is from some books," Harry explained. "Gollum is all obsessed with something he calls the Precious, which is actually a ring that keeps the Dark Lord alive."

Kreacher stared at Harry, then ran off towards the stairs.

"I've never seen him act like _that_ before," Sirius muttered. "He doesn't like me very much."

"Be fair, Sirius, you don't like him much either," Remus said.

"I'm _fairly_ sure he started it," Sirius replied. "I'm not completely certain about that, though."

He sat down on the nearby sofa, rubbing his temples. "So that other house-elf… that would be that Dobby one, right? You said he was worried about you."

"That's right," Harry agreed. "His master wanted to… do something? Dobby thought it was to do with the Chamber of Secrets, but I don't know if that's true or not."

He tilted his head a little. "I wonder if it was because of how there are other non-human students at Hogwarts now."

"Yeah, probably," Sirius agreed. "Old Slytherin is supposed to have wanted to drive out muggle-born students, so who knows how he'd react to a dragon or a sphinx or whatever."

He lay down and put his feet up on the sofa, paused, then reached over to put his shoes on and did it again. "It's a pity Dobby isn't here, we could probably work out who his master is by asking the right questions. There aren't that many wizards… well, in Britain, especially not ones who are rich enough to have a house elf."

* * *

"...there's basically two parts to it," Sirius was explaining, crouching in front of Harry. "Or three if you want to be picky. The first bit is actually noticing someone is performing legilimency on you at all, and it's kind of the equivalent of learning to wiggle your ears."

Harry flicked his ears.

"For humans, I mean," Sirius amended, and demonstrated. "Humans can learn to do it if they work out where the muscle is, but it's one we don't normally use so most people can't do it – but that's the _only_ reason most humans can't do it. Once you know how it feels, it's much easier."

He counted on his fingers. "Which number were we on?"

"One," Remus said.

"One, right," Sirius nodded. "The next bit is making sure someone doesn't actually get anything useful. The book I read said that you could do that either by focusing on nothing, so your mind is clear, or by focusing on something irrelevant."

That sounded interesting to Harry, and he wondered if it was more like using a Palantir or more like psychic powers in _The Rowan_ and _Pegasus In Flight_. Or maybe like something else entirely.

Before he could try describing how those worked, however, Kreacher came back down the stairs.

"Kreacher?" Sirius asked, turning to look. "Where did you head off to?"

"Kreacher went to get the locket, Master," Kreacher replied, sneering. "Kreacher would not expect _Master_ to understand. Master never understands, no..."

"Why were you gone twenty minutes?" Remus asked.

Kreacher looked down. "Kreacher hid the locket, so no filthy thieves would get it. Kreacher forgot where he hid it."

"A locket?" Harry asked. "Do you mind telling us why you went to get the locket?"

"Of course Kreacher minds!" Kreacher replied sharply. "Kreacher has not hidden the locket for ten years because Kreacher wanted it to be a conversation piece! Stupid dragon!"

"Kreacher," Sirius growled. "Manners."

"Manners?" Kreacher replied. "What are manners? Master doesn't say please. Master doesn't say thank you."

Harry turned to look at Sirius, who seemed a bit uncomfortable.

"In my defence," he began, "Kreacher _is_ the sort of house elf who'd have been happier if Voldie was still-"

"Kreacher is not!" Kreacher snapped, pointing one of his long bony fingers at Sirius. "Kreacher does not like the Dark Lord! But new Master never bothered to ask!"

"You _don't_ like Voldie?" Sirius asked, blinking. "Are you _serious?_"

"Stupid Master should know master is Sirius," Kreacher muttered. "Kreacher is Kreacher."

Remus snorted. "He's got you there, Padfoot."

"Kreacher does not have Master," Kreacher replied, sounding befuddled. "What does the werewolf mean?"

Harry saw the House-Elf give Harry a sly glance, then look disappointed for some reason.

"The locket?" he prompted.

"Oh, yes," Kreacher said, shooting another glance at Sirius. "Kreacher will tell the story to the polite dragon. Kreacher _cannot_ tell any of the family, Kreacher was ordered not to tell, but Kreacher will tell the dragon."

He clenched the chain of the locket with both hands, so it swung gently back and forth. "It was after new Master ran away, because he was a bad boy."

Kreacher paused, glancing at Sirius, and Sirius nodded – a little reluctantly, perhaps.

"I've got to admit, I was _quite_ a bad boy," he admitted. "I… don't regret running away, but I did some things I _do_ regret."

Harry shifted around a little, spreading one of his wings out to cup it around Sirius, and Kreacher went on. "But Master Regulus was a good boy, and he was eager to help the Dark Lord… who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding, to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns..."

Remus gasped softly.

"What is it, Moony?" Sirius asked.

"Just… I don't think we ever really confirmed that was what Voldemort was going to do," Remus explained. "If we had, it would have brought the whole ICW down on him like a ton of bricks – statute breaches are taken very seriously, especially on that scale."

"Stupid wizards never thought to ask the Dark Lord or his supporters," Kreacher muttered. "He _said_. He never kept it _secret._ They all _knew_."

"You said Regulus wanted to help the Dark Lord," Harry said, trying his best to keep this on topic because it sounded important – to Kreacher, at least.

"He wanted to help, yes," Kreacher agreed. "Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord, he was so proud, so happy… and one day, he came to see Kreacher. Master Regulus always liked Kreacher."

Kreacher didn't even give Sirius a glance at that point, his gaze focused entirely downwards on the swinging locket, and continued. "He said… the Dark Lord required an elf."

* * *

Slowly, the whole story came out. Sirius' brother Regulus had volunteered Kreacher to do what Tom Riddle had wanted, and told him to do whatever he was ordered and then to come home. Kreacher was insistent about the bit about going home, and they soon found out why – there was a cave by the sea, and in the cave was a lake, and the lake had a small island with a basin full of potion.

It was hard to listen to, and Harry thought it was hard to listen to for Sirius as well. Tom had made Kreacher drink the potion, which burned his insides and made him desperately thirsty, and then left him to die – surrounded by water, but the water was full of the undead.

Harry hadn't known the undead were a real thing, or at least not the zombie sort of undead called Inferi, and he wondered how they worked – but only in a sort of distant way, as he heard about the second badly-treated house-elf in the space of about a month and it made him feel angry at Tom Riddle even more than before.

Maybe it was because here he was hearing about it from a victim, and one that Tom had left to die – and who had only survived because Kreacher had followed Regulus' order to come home.

Slowly, haltingly, Kreacher finished the tale. Regulus had gone with Kreacher back to the cave, with a copy of the locket, and had drunk the potion himself – ordering Kreacher to switch the lockets, and then to leave without him and destroy the locket.

And he hadn't been able to make so much as a mark on it.

* * *

When the old House-Elf had finally finished, Sirius was quiet for a long time.

"So," he said, eventually. "Was that a more _Gryffindor_ thing, or a more _Slytherin_ thing?"

"Really, Sirius?" Remus groaned. "That's what you took away from that?"

"It's a legitimate question," Sirius protested. "I want to know exactly _what kind_ of mental shift I should be going through about my unexpectedly amazing little brother."

Harry snorted.

"If that's something that's so hard to destroy, it's a lot like the One Ring," he added. "In the book, it took throwing it into a volcano, though I think Gandalf says that dragon fire might work if the dragon fire was hot enough."

"I think we should see what Dumbledore thinks," Remus suggested. "I imagine that's the sort of thing he'd know most about. Would that be all right, Kreacher?"

Kreacher looked at Remus suspiciously. "The werewolf will try to destroy it?" he asked.

"If Tom Riddle wanted it in one piece, we'll do our best to destroy it," Harry promised.

Kreacher blinked his big eyes. "Who is Tom Riddle?"

"You know him as the Dark Lord," Harry explained. "That's his real name. I think Professor Dumbledore said he was a half blood who didn't like that he wasn't a pure blood."

The elf's jaw dropped.

"The Dark Lord was a halfblood?" he demanded.

"That's what Dumbledore said," Harry confirmed.

Kreacher seemed torn, then crossed his arms. "Kreacher never liked him anyway."

The movement made the locket jingle, and after a moment Kreacher handed it over to Harry.

"Polite dragon _must_ destroy it," he insisted. "He must!"

"If it can be destroyed, we'll do it," Harry replied firmly.

* * *

Sirius and Remus both agreed with Harry that the best thing to do was to ask Professor Dumbledore about it, and Harry suggested that Remus send a Patronus off to Dumbledore straight away. Remus demurred, saying that they weren't sure if Dumbledore would be alone and whether this should be kept secret, so they decided to send Hedwig instead as soon as she got back from Dean's house.

Harry thought about putting the locket around his neck, so he didn't lose it, but that sounded too much like what Frodo had done and that had made him gradually get controlled by the One Ring. So instead he put the locket in a box, and put that in his tent, and then asked Sirius what they should do while they waited.

Sirius didn't know everything about Occlumency, just what he'd read in a book, and he couldn't do Legilimency so they couldn't have Harry build up the ability to recognize when someone was trying to do Legilimency on him. Harry did wonder if _he_ should learn Legilimency, but that sounded rude and more like the sort of thing an unpleasant dragon would do than the sort of thing a polite dragon would do. Instead, Remus suggested that they should try something to make Harry better at duelling.

That sounded interesting, but no sooner had Remus mentioned the idea when there was a knock at the window. Harry went over to open it, letting Hedwig in, and the snowy owl flew once around the room before landing on the back of a convenient chair.

"Thanks, girl," Harry smiled, taking Dean's reply. "I'm afraid you're going to be heading off up to Hogwarts in a bit."

Hedwig shook a few flakes of sleet from her feathers, and barked testily.

"Not until you've had brunch, of course," Harry amended, checking the time. "It's a bit early for lunch, but if you want to wait a couple of hours we can sort that out."

"I'm not sure we've got anything good for an owl in the fridge," Sirius said.

"Sirius, that fridge had _two_ Boggarts in it," Remus noted. "It took us an hour to clear out the food after that, a lot of it was surprisingly resistant to just being Vanished."

"Yeah, and now there's nothing in there except some Butterbeer," Sirius agreed.

"I'll get some bacon from my fridge," Harry decided.

* * *

A few minutes later, Harry had crisped a rasher for Hedwig with his breath – which was much more convenient than getting out the frying pan – and opened Dean's letter.

He sounded interested in the Animagus stuff as well, and asked if it was something that you were allowed to do over summer. That was something Harry didn't know, and he asked it out loud.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure just doing the transformation isn't punished outside school time," Sirius said, looking into the air as he thought. "I remember doing it a couple of times here…"

Dean also said thanks for the shirt, and how he'd been able to show it to his family by having his dad try it on. That was something Harry was glad to see – he knew that Dean's family found magic very interesting, and they didn't get to see much – and it gave him a nice happy feeling which he needed quite a lot after the sad story about Regulus Black.

Then Harry got to the last bit of the letter, and had to smile.

"Dean's got about five different suggestions for what to do with your mother's portrait," he told Sirius, and counted them off one by one. "He says we could put something heavy in front of her, like a cupboard… or remove the wall her portrait is stuck to and put that bit of wall somewhere else… or hang all the coats in front of her… or vanish the wall the portrait is attached to… or cut the portrait out of the frame and reframe it somewhere else. And he says that he's guessing you don't want to just set fire to it."

"If he'd said that yesterday, I'd have been tempted," Sirius admitted. "But… well, Kreacher likes her. I'm wondering if I should do one of those and just move the portrait down to where Kreacher lives."

He shrugged. "Maybe I'll ask Kreacher what he'd like. I think the main thing is just to make it so she doesn't shout at anyone using the front door… or making a noise."

Harry began to write the letter to Dumbledore, deciding to keep it short and just say that something important related to Tom Riddle had happened and could the Professor let them know when he was available?

"Or in general," Sirius added. "Moony, do you think maybe I'm being too touchy about this?"

"You're asking a man who's lived in a flat," Remus replied. "I've had plenty of fantasies about consigning noisy neighbours to the basement."

"Good point," Sirius admitted. "But you do have that soundproofed room."

"That soundproofed room is covered in wolf fur and you know it," Remus pointed out. "I'm lucky I'm not allergic."

"Can a werewolf be allergic to wolf fur?" Harry asked, checking over what he'd written. "That sounds like it would either make things much worse, or it would just mean the wolf side spent the whole night sneezing."

He showed the letter to Remus and Sirius. "How does this look?"

"Looks pretty good," Remus told him. "I'd say that should cover it."

* * *

With Hedwig winging her way north with the letter, Remus got on to the thing he'd mentioned before about duelling.

"As I see it, there are two problems that would prevent you from being naturally very likely to win a duel," he explained. "Because, you know, dragon."

Harry nodded.

"Firstly, there's the thing that's a disadvantage," the Marauder went on. "That's that you're a quadruped – so it's harder for you to hold your wand in one… paw?"

"Paw's good," Harry agreed.

"In one paw," Remus resumed, "and still move around in a duel – or, if you have to have one, in a fight."

"In a fight, couldn't he just set someone on fire?" Sirius asked. "Or fly off or something?"

"Flame freezing charms exist, and so do buildings," Remus countered. "And sometimes, people with flame freezing charms _in_ buildings."

"Point," Sirius conceded.

"What's the other problem?" Harry asked.

"Well, it's more of an _advantage_," Remus told him. "Sort of. Your hide can deflect spells, but unfortunately your eyes can't and everyone knows it – they're the traditional weak point on dragons."

Harry asked about whether the Voonerables were another traditional weak point on dragons, then had to explain how that idea turned up in _Guards, Guards_, and that was followed by explaining Smaug's waistcoat of jewellery in _The Hobbit_.

Sirius liked the idea of Harry wearing something to cover his vulnerable eyes, and after a few minutes of discussion they all realized that, actually, glasses probably qualified so that was all right then. And Remus pointed out that Harry could always use a wing as a kind of face shield.

"What about the thing with my having four legs?" Harry said, then. "June and Tanisis are apparently getting on okay. And I don't think I could carry my wand in my mouth, I might bite through it."

"No, I wasn't thinking about it being in your mouth," Remus corrected. "We'll need to practice with it, preferably when one of us visits Hogwarts during term, but I was actually thinking about you having your wand on your _tail_."

Harry saw where Remus was going straight away. "So, sort of like a Manticore's sting, except I'm casting spells from it instead?"

"Exactly," Remus smiled. "It'll probably be difficult, but it's an alternative to wandless casting."

"I can cast _some_ spells out of my mouth," Harry reminded him. "Just not many of them. I think having a freezing spell would be good."

"Dragons breathing ice?" Sirius asked. "Preposterous!"

There was a sharp _pop_ as Kreacher appeared next to them, holding a notebook in one hand.

"What would polite dragon like for lunch?" he asked, a quill ready to take down the answer.

Harry was a little surprised, and thought about the question. "Um… I'm not sure what you have here?"

"Kreacher is not sure either," Kreacher said. "When Kreacher checked the pantry it tried to eat him. Kreacher is going shopping before making lunch."

* * *

Kreacher's first attempt at pasta wasn't very good, but it was the thought that counted. Harry suggested that maybe he should teach Kreacher to make some of the dishes he'd done at Privet Drive, and Kreacher seemed to find the idea a bit strange.

Maybe it was because there weren't any cooking classes at Hogwarts, so most wizards didn't know how to cook, or if they did it was because they didn't have house-elves in the first place.

After that, the afternoon was mostly taken up by a combination of trying to successfully attach a wand to Harry's tail (Spellotape worked if they used enough of it, but it was difficult to do in a hurry, while sticking charms didn't do what they were supposed to) and, after that was written off as impractical for now, clearing out part of one of the upstairs rooms.

There was a big tapestry which had the entire Black family on it, or it had before most of them got blasted at with wands. Apparently anyone who had offended Sirius' mother got their picture blasted off the tapestry, though Regulus had escaped because he'd been sneaky enough that nobody had actually known what he'd done except for Kreacher.

Harry was a bit surprised to see 'Charlus Potter' on there, as apparently he'd married Dorea Black, but Sirius said it was a different branch of the Potter family. Seeing Lucius Malfoy was a bit of a surprise as well, but that made Harry frown as he started checking the names.

"Is everyone named after stars?" he asked. "A lot of people are, but I can see some that aren't."

"Most of the people born into the family are," Sirius agreed. "And before you ask, no, I don't know what was up with Cousin Narcissa."

He looked over at Remus. "There isn't a galaxy called Narcissa, is there?"

"Don't think so," Remus replied, waving his wand to vanish an unpleasant stain.

Then a nest of Doxys came flying out of a chest of drawers, and that sort of occupied them for the next hour or so.

* * *

Dinner was a roast, something Kreacher said he definitely knew how to make, and Harry had to agree – it was nice and tasty, and after looking torn for a bit Sirius complimented Kreacher on his work as well.

It had been so much trouble to mostly-clear that one room that they didn't really feel like doing any more of the house, and so Harry dug into his collection of books to find ones that Sirius and Remus were likely to be interested in. Sirius seemed like the sort of person to enjoy a story about heroes and villains, so he got _Pawn of Prophecy_, while Harry gave Remus _Equal Rites_ because it seemed more like Remus would enjoy a bit of a laugh.

Harry himself was reading a book called _Mutineer's Moon_, which started with the idea that the moon was actually secretly a giant disguised spaceship. It was odd, but nice, and Harry wondered where it was going to take the ideas in it.

He also wondered when _The Last Command_ was going to come out, the third of the books about Admiral Thrawn, because that was probably going to be a lot of fun to read as well.

Then there was a flash of white light, and a beautiful pearly-white phoenix appeared in front of the three of them

"_I just got your letter, Harry,"_ the phoenix said, with Professor Dumbledore's voice. _"If it is urgent, then the Floo to my office will be open for the next half an hour; if not, then I think it would be best if you came tomorrow after breakfast. There are of course things more urgent than breakfast, but I leave it up to you to decide."_

The phoenix dissolved.

"What do you think?" Remus asked.

"I think it'd be better if we did it as soon as possible," Harry said. "We did promise Kreacher, and it'd be good to know what Professor Dumbledore says."

Nobody seemed to disagree with that, and Harry picked up the locket before following the two grown-ups through the Floo.

* * *

When they arrived, Professor Dumbledore was inspecting a collection of dressing gowns held up as if supported by invisible pegs.

"Ah, so good to see you," he said. "Tell me, which of these do you think would go well for our discussion?"

Harry looked from the alchemical-symbol dressing gown he'd seen before, to one which had dozens of threads of brass woven through it, and then to a brilliant blue one which seemed to glow faintly.

"I think any would do, Sir," he answered, and Dumbledore selected one from the rack before shrugging it on over his pyjamas and tying the cord in a bow.

"It's always best to be comfortable when you discuss something important, I find," he explained, before waving his hand to send the dressing gowns away and sitting down in one of the armchairs. "How has your Christmas been, Harry? I must apologize for the socks, it quite escaped me that you might have trouble wearing them."

"That's okay, Sir," Harry replied. "And… well, I met Sirius' house-elf today, and he told us about something that happened with Tom Riddle."

"I sort of wondered what happened to Regulus," Sirius added. "I knew he vanished, but… I wondered whether he'd fought against us. Especially against James."

"Ah, Regulus," Dumbledore agreed. "I remember him well. And no, I do not believe I know what happened to him either."

"We don't know _all_ the details," Harry began, and then laid out what Kreacher had told them – about the locket, and how Regulus had decided to replace it with a fake, and died with an instruction to Kreacher to destroy it.

When he finished, Dumbledore closed his eyes and put a finger to his chin.

He sat there for several minutes, until Sirius coughed uncertainly.

"Is he asleep?"

"No, no, I am quite awake," Dumbledore told him. "I am just thinking about the implications of this. Do you have the locket?"

Harry took it from his pocket, and Dumbledore waved his wand once and tapped the locket. There was a little flicker of red light.

"I see," he said. "It is as I feared."

He looked up from the small object. "Unfortunately, Harry, I must explain something quite difficult to you. You see, I fear you will have to be involved in fulfilling the request made by Regulus Black, and it is something you cannot do yet."

"I'm not sure I understand, Professor," Harry admitted.

"No, but that is a temporary problem," Dumbledore replied. "Easily fixed, though I must ask that you not share it around much – you see, Tom does not know some of this, and he does not know that we know any of it."

He chuckled. "The problem is a Riddle that it took me quite some time to puzzle out."

* * *

Dumbledore reached into a pocket, and produced the diary Harry had given him some months ago. "Doubtless you remember this, Harry, but – Sirius, this is something that Harry found in his collection of books before coming to Hogwarts. Neither of us is at all sure how he got hold of it, but it is the school diary of one Tom Marvolo Riddle."

Sirius whistled, then snorted. "What kind of stuff is in there? I know it could be full of really evil stuff, but maybe he had a crush on a Muggleborn from Gryffindor and that's what got the whole thing started?"

"I had a look, and it was empty," Harry replied. "But that didn't seem right – I thought it might be hidden by magic."

"Alas, it is not the diary of a normal school child," Dumbledore replied. "Harry is quite correct. This diary is not simply a diary, but is a black magic object in its own right – and a foul one indeed. It is of a type that can only be created by a dark ritual, which includes the murder of a helpless individual as part of the process."

He looked down at the diary sadly. "I always thought that Tom was a troubled child, but I had hoped that the stable environment of Hogwarts would allow him to put that aside… alas, it has turned out that he was doing terrible things while still in school."

"What kind of dark object is it, Professor?" Harry asked. "Is the locket another one?"

"Well reasoned, Harry, well reasoned indeed," Dumbledore said, with a quick smile. "Both of these objects are examples of what is known as a _horcrux_. The Horcrux is a kind of home for a part of the soul, that prevents the owner from truly dying so long as the Horcrux exists."

"I understand, Sir," Harry said, thinking about Isildur's Bane. "So does that mean we're going to Mount Etna?"

Dumbledore blinked. "Pardon, Harry?"

"Oh, um, in _The Lord Of The Rings_ there's an object called the One Ring which holds a lot of the power of the villain, Sauron," Harry explained. "He can't die until it's destroyed, but once it's thrown in the volcano Mount Doom he's destroyed. The problem is that the ring is so evil that nobody wants to do it."

"Well, that is interesting," Dumbledore said, thinking. "Though I fear we cannot throw these Horcruxes into a volcano, if only because it would be very hard to get them out again if we turned out to be wrong."

"That is a good point," Harry admitted. "So how _will_ we destroy them, Professor?"

"That may be up to you to do, Harry," Dumbledore replied. "You see, there was a prophecy made shortly before you were born."

"Oh, a prophecy too?" Harry asked, quite glad to be on familiar ground. "They've got all sorts of treatments in the books I've read. One series has a prophecy which speaks to someone."

"This one is a little less loquacious," the Professor said.

"Professor, I don't think Harry understands that word," Sirius interjected. "I know _I_ don't..."

"I've heard the word," Harry said, thinking. "I think it was in an Asterix book, though, and they didn't explain it."

"It means to be talkative, my boy," Dumbledore explained, and went on to tell them the text of the prophecy.

It was a bit vague, really, a lot more vague than the Darine Codex from the Belgarion books or even Boromir's dream about seeking the sword that was broken. But since Harry had been born at the end of July, and he had a lightning-bolt mark given by Voldemort, it seemed clear enough that it did relate to Harry.

"And you think this means I'm the only one who can stop him?" Harry asked.

"Well, you see..." Dumbledore paused, smiling. "I don't think prophecies are all that likely to be true."

He winked. "In fact, I don't believe a word of this one, except perhaps the word 'seventh'. But, as you have no doubt experienced, sometimes you don't have to believe in something for it to work anyway."

Harry nodded, sort of following that.

"So let us recap," Dumbledore went on. "Each of these Horcruxes is a piece of Tom, and we must destroy them if we are to be free of him… but it may be that they all count as a piece of him, and if so you must be the one to destroy each one."

"How is Harry supposed to do that?" Sirius asked. "Eat them?"

"Alas, I fear not," Dumbledore said. "I remain unsure exactly what might destroy a Horcrux, and I believe the only things that could destroy a Horcrux are very powerful magic… for example, I have my hopes for the spell Fiendfyre."

"So I need to learn that spell?" Harry asked.

"It would be most helpful," Dumbledore agreed. "Though it is a tremendously powerful and quite dangerous spell, and I would advise you learn some merely very difficult spells first."

He frowned. "Though it does trouble me as to how many of these terrible things Tom actually created. I have never heard of anyone creating more than one, and here we have two."

* * *

Dumbledore was silent again after that, then smiled. "Oh, yes, and I was wondering if you have managed to practice Occlumency?"

"Sirius explained how it works," Harry said. "But he's not able to do the mind-reading thing yet so I can't really _practice_ it."

"Well, I have not practiced Legilimency for some years," Dumbledore confided. "I'm already quite good at it, so I see no need to practice. With your permission, Harry, I'd like to give it a go?"

Harry nodded, trying to blank his mind, and Dumbledore peered into his eyes.

"_Legilimens,"_ the Headmaster incanted.

There was a sort of itchy feeling, and Harry blinked reflexively. The itchy feeling promptly went away.

"Well, now, that was quite the interesting experience," Dumbledore said. "I saw a most strange image of a young man with a very large sword, and then I was ejected in less than a second. I must commend your excellent skill."

"I just blinked," Harry admitted.

"And a fine blink it was, my boy," Dumbledore replied with a smile. "If you do that when you are under Legilimency, you shall have nothing to worry about."

* * *

AN:

* * *

The only thing preventing Tom Riddle from getting the idea from The Lord Of The Rings is that it came out in the 1950s. It is a general mythological thing, though – for example, Kosechi the Deathless is one example.


	28. Dragon Language Lessons

Harry had a lot to think about for the rest of the holiday. On top of the question about Dobby, and how to help him – if that was possible – there was now this whole other thing about how Tom Riddle had done awful things to his soul to make it so he couldn't be killed.

On the other paw, on that matter Harry was sort of in the position Frodo was in during the several years after Bilbo had left but before the Nazgul came. Which was a fairly comfortable position to be in, all things considered.

He told Kreacher some of what they'd discussed – about how he couldn't yet destroy the locket but he was going to learn until he had exactly that skill – and Kreacher gave him an uncharacteristic hug that surprised both of them before backing away and going back to cleaning.

Over the next few days, the impact on the house was quite a sight to see, with rooms shedding their clutter and beginning to look more like you could actually live in the house itself. It was still the middle of a damp, slushy London winter, but it lifted Harry's mood and it seemed like Sirius was under a bit less stress as well.

As for the other project they had, Remus tried transfiguring some of the material lying around into a wand-holder that could be strapped to Harry's tail. It took a few tries before they had something that would stay securely attached to the tapered tail – unlike some dragons from books Harry didn't have a spade, which would have made the whole thing much easier – but by the twenty-eighth of December it seemed like they had something that would work.

"All right, Harry, let's give it a go," Remus decided, stepping back. "You don't have to cast any spells – that's something to do back at Hogwarts – but see if you can get the wand pointing where you want it."

He waved his own wand, and a dozen little coloured motes of light appeared in the air.

"Point at one, and I'll tell you which one you've got it pointed at," the Marauder instructed.

It turned out to be a lot harder than Harry was expecting. He could point his tail in roughly the right direction, but then Remus would tell him that he was actually pointing it at the green one instead of the yellow one he was aiming for – or none at all – or now he was aiming at the yellow one, but he'd been aiming for the blue one instead.

Half way through that an argument started between Sirius and Kreacher, but it sounded like this one was just about whether to put new wallpaper up, so it probably wasn't so serious.

* * *

By the beginning of January, Harry was sort of feeling like he was getting the hang of it. It'd be something to practice back at Hogwarts, certainly, and with only a couple of days to go until the start of term he packed everything up (including several new books, some of them duplicated by Remus from library books, so he had a reserve of books he hadn't read yet) and said his goodbyes before going back to Hogwarts via the Floo.

It was much more snowy this far north, and when Harry flew over the castle after putting his things away a little smile forced itself out onto his muzzle.

Hogwarts really was a beautiful place, especially blanketed in snow. The Black Lake was a smooth expanse of ice with deep black-looking water under it, marred only by patches of snow that hadn't blown off and a melted-looking hole at the corner nearest Hagrid's hut, and the lawns were criss-crossed by trodden-down patches where people had gone out to the broom sheds or just to have a snowball fight.

That line of thought led Harry to notice that one was going on right now, and that the Weasleys appeared to be gamely holding their ground against what looked like half of the lower four years of Slytherin.

Turning back towards Hogwarts, Harry alighted on the snow-covered castle roof and considered what he should do about the snowball fight.

The obvious thing to do would be to join in, and that did sound like a good idea, but… _how_ exactly to join in?

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Harry had decided that sneaking up on the Slytherin team and hurling big lumps of snow at them with his wings, while entertaining, led to getting hit by too many snowballs himself.

Clearly the better option would have been to just join Ron and the others. But it was easy to work that sort of thing out after you'd already tried.

* * *

A few days later, when term started again, Harry reshuffled his unofficial timetable as best he could to try and fit in everything he wanted to.

It was kind of surprising how much time was still available to be moved around, with how he'd felt last term, and Harry wondered if that was just how it was – you could always find more time, and find more time, until instead you were stressed out – but he was able to arrange with Hagrid to really start teaching the big man some words of Dragonish. (Or Dragonese, or Dragonnish, or whatever the word you wanted to use was.)

On Saturday afternoon, every week, Harry began flying down to Hagrid's hut. The two of them would sit in a porch that Hagrid had built out of wood and canvas, with Harry turning his attention between Nora and Hagrid to make sure that he could keep demonstrating Dragonish to Hagrid (and to Hermione, who quickly started joining in the impromptu sessions).

Harry found the whole thing quite relaxing, really, and after the first week's session Hagrid offered to spend the time teaching Harry to knit as well. It transpired that Harry's talons could work quite well as knitting needles, though it was obvious by the end of the first hour that it would take a lot of work for Harry to produce anything other than 'misshapen lump'.

The contrast with Oliver Wood's enthusiastic Quidditch practices couldn't be greater, especially with how Oliver was _sure_ that the Nimbus 2001 brooms about half his team was flying on would give them a massive advantage against Hufflepuff towards the end of the term.

Harry did enjoy them both, but he thought he'd enjoy the Quidditch a bit less without this to balance it with.

* * *

"Hmm..." Harry said, checking the textbook and then looking back at his homework essay. "Do you think it's fair to say that the Black Death had a _bigger_ impact on Wizard-Muggle relations than the other plagues?"

"I dunno," Ron replied, frowning as well. "We don't know all that much about that other one from the six-sixties, do we? So maybe that one was just as bad."

"I'll say it had a _significant_ impact," Harry decided, writing that down. "Such as… people asking their local magic users for cures…. Or thinking that the witches and wizards had caused it…"

"Don't forget that a lot of them were hiding even before the Statute of Secrecy," Hermione said. "And that the Black Death hit all over Europe, so some people could tell it wasn't an attack on them or even on England and Scotland."

"Good point," Harry agreed. "Wasn't there some plant that the local people thought was a cure, only it wasn't?"

Neville nodded. "They thought it repelled the miasma… hold on..."

As he started to look it up, Fred came over and sat down next to them.

"Oi, we're working here," Ron complained. "Shove off."

"I'm worried about Percy," Fred explained, as George came to stand next to them – Harry assumed that was because of the lack of free seats.

"He's worried about Percy," George agreed. "So, as you can tell, we're both worried about Percy."

"But, hold on..." Dean said. "Hold on. So _you're_ worried, and _you_ said _he's_ worried."

"Exactly," Fred nodded. "Both of us. I'm Fred, and I say I'm worried."

"And I'm Fred," George went on. "And I say George here is worried. Since that means both Fred and George are worried..."

"Okay, what's this about?" Hermione asked.

"Percy's not his usual self," Fred explained.

"I asked him whether he thought a woollen sheep soaked in food dye would be an appropriate pranking tool, and he just grunted," George clarified.

"Why did you ask him that in the first place?" Ron said. "He's a prefect?"

"I like to include all our family members in planning," Fred said.

Harry looked between the twins, confused for a moment, then decided it was a Fred And George Thing.

"Is it possible he's being a teenager?" Neville said. "I've heard that that sort of thing happens when you're a teenager."

"Hey!" Hermione protested. "I'm one of those now."

"That's okay, girls are different," Dean nodded. "Or that's what my mum keeps saying. I've got sisters, so she'd know."

"No, I don't think it's that he's a teenager..." Fred mused. "I'm pretty sure Percy was born middle aged."

* * *

Harry was still wondering vaguely about whether Percy was ill or something during the next Defence class, which still wasn't really what he'd expected Second Year Defence to be like.

"Of course, fighting dark creatures is important," Professor Lockhart said, with a winning smile. "But just as important is making sure people know dark creatures can be beaten! And the best way to do that is for them to know that Gilderoy Lockhart – _your_ beloved professor – is there to help."

He clapped his hands. "So! Today, I want you all to design special greetings cards including a scene from one of my many adventures, and write up why you chose what you did. I'll be taking them in at the end of the lesson, and next time – _next_ time – you'll be provided with the materials to make those very same cards."

Dean grumbled something, and he wasn't the only one who seemed unimpressed. Harry had to admit that, while he _could_ see the point of something inspirational, this seemed more like the sort of thing he'd done in primary school with glue and magazine cutouts.

Besides, he wanted to practice spellcasting with his tail, and doing it in Charms was better than nothing but it was still done at a desk. If there was any subject where you'd be moving around, Harry thought it would be Defence.

Still, Professor Lockhart presumably had some kind of general lesson plan for everyone.

After thinking about it a bit, Harry decided that the one that really interested him was the one about werewolves. The full moon had been only a couple of days ago, and he wondered if Remus had stayed at Grimmauld Place or gone back to his flat with the soundproofed room.

Maybe having Sirius around helped? Harry sort of remembered that that was why they'd learned in the first place.

* * *

By the end of the lesson, Harry had a sort-of-diagram drawn for what he wanted along with a few hundred words about why the card design would be good for making people more comfortable with werewolves. Dean had done better, actually sketching out a punch-up with a Yeti and making the greeting 'you're a knock-out!', but then he _was_ the one who liked doing art.

It seemed like he'd enjoyed the lesson that way, at least. Though the Yeti _was_ the one knocking out Lockhart in the sketch.

When everyone else set off for their free period, Harry stayed behind for a bit, and Professor Lockhart smiled.

"Ah, Harry!" he said. "Good Christmas? I notice you didn't get me that World Peace I said would be my ideal gift!"

He winked.

"I thought you said that was an ideal birthday present, Sir," Harry replied, understanding it was a joke but getting a bit distracted.

"Well spotted, nothing gets past you," Lockhart chuckled. "Looking for advice, Harry?"

"I was wondering when I'd get a chance to learn the Patronus charm," Harry explained. "I was hoping we'd start doing practical work this term."

"Well, it is practical work, isn't it?" Lockhart asked. "But I know what you mean, Harry, though… these spells… a lot of them are quite dangerous! Especially the Patronus charm, that's a very risky one. Very risky spell."

"That's why I want to learn it with someone helping," Harry replied, quite reasonably as far as he was concerned. "It's safer than learning it by myself."

"Of course, of course," Lockhart agreed, considering. "Hmm… what about if I walk you through a different spell instead, Harry? One that's a bit more appropriate for you?"

That sounded like a good idea, so Harry nodded. "If you think so, Professor. I'm just kind of worried about how many spells we're learning in Charms and Transfiguration but not Defence."

Professor Lockhart took out his wand and flourished it, spinning it around his fingers, then nearly dropped it. "Ahem! Yes, well… this is quite a tricky charm, so do pay attention. You move your wand like so."

Harry watched closely as the Professor moved his wand in a quick up-and-down motion before incanting _'Homorphus!'_

Nothing happened, obviously, because there wasn't a werewolf, but Harry did like the idea a lot. He got his own wand ready, and watched as Lockhart did the wand movement again.

"So you do that wand movement and end it pressed against the throat of the werewolf?" Harry asked, to be clear on it.

"Well remembered, Harry!" Lockhart agreed, making Harry smile. "And then the incantation is _Homorphus_!"

"Homorphus," Harry repeated, and it certainly sounded right. Professor Lockhart had him say it a few more times, then said he'd done very well indeed and gave Gryffindor a point.

It was a pity it would take so long for Harry to have a chance to actually try the spell out, though, and Lockhart reminded him that it was best not to rely on it at all because a mistake would leave a dangerous werewolf right there.

* * *

Two days later, at dinner, Harry was muzzle-deep in _Domes of Fire_ – and trying not to giggle at the description of the nacre-sheathed city that had to be resheathed every time there was a storm – when Ron whooped.

"Hey, Harry, look!" he said, pointing. Harry lowered his novel, and blinked in surprise at the sight of plates upon plates of pizza.

"I wonder who got the House-Elves all those Muggle cookbooks?" Fred asked, out loud.

"I wonder who had such a good idea," George agreed.

Harry took one of the nearest slices and inspected it. It had a crisp base, quite thin, and he was fairly sure there was bacon on top of it along with the cheese and tomato mixture.

On the plate next to it was one with a much deeper base, and Ron took one of those slices first. He cut a piece of the crust, then blinked and looked closer.

"The crust's got cheese in it," he said. "I wonder how they did that?"

"I think Muggles can do that," a Sixth-year Gryffindor said, taking one of the slices for himself. "I've had it before, Mum's a Muggle and she got us two of these for my birthday dinner last year."

Looking up and down the table, Harry could see all kinds of mixtures of toppings and crusts and bases – there didn't seem to be anything that _wasn't_ pizza, but he could see one that was made with lamb chunks and apple slices, and another that seemed to have strawberries and black pepper, and it _looked_ like that one had beef and mushrooms… it was hard to see any two that were the same, at first, but then he started to catch sight of them.

"How do you eat these?" one of the fourth-years asked.

"You just take a slice!" Colin Creevey told him, loudly enough that half the hall heard. "Then you can cut it up with a knife and fork, or roll it up, or fold it up – whatever you find easy!"

He demonstrated by taking a slice of one that had chicken, chorizo and lemon on it, folding it up lengthways, and eating the tip. His eyes went a little wide because of the sourness of the lemon, but it seemed like it meant that everyone else got the idea, and soon there was a low buzz of conversation as people began trading around bits of pizza to get a nice combination of flavours.

There was a little one that arrived for Harry with 'zinc zest', which meant they'd gone to the trouble of shaving off bits of metal and sprinkled it over the pizza. That was nice of them, and Harry checked to see whether Tanisis and June were both coping with the unusual food menu before smiling and folding his slices together.

He did notice Percy didn't eat much, though.

* * *

That day sort of set a pattern.

Harry assumed that it _was_ the Twins who'd given the House-Elves all those ideas, and it was nice of them but it sort of seemed like they got _really _enthusiastic about a new kind of making food and just did loads and loads of it all at once. There was one day when everything was curry (from the very mild, through normal, to a bright green one where Neville looked like _he_ was about to be the one breathing fire), another day when they made about a hundred different combinations of paella, and then there was the time there was nothing but muffins.

That didn't mean that lessons stopped, though, and now they were into the second term of second year they were starting to expand on the concepts from first year as well as learning new spells.

"Remember," Professor McGonagall said, putting some boxes with snails in them down on the tables – one per student. "When you are casting a set of spells in a chain, you must make sure that each of the intervening steps is properly cast. If you use a spell intended to turn a duck into a pillow, but you are casting it on something that is still partly a shoe, then you will not find yourself with any of a shoe, a duck or a pillow and you will have to reverse the transfiguration all the way back to the beginning!"

Harry made a note about that, then had an idea.

The first half of the spell chain they were going to be doing today was turning a snail into a teapot, and then they were turning that teapot into a tortoise. Both of those were first-year spells, so maybe it was a good time to try out casting a spell with his tail?

He rummaged in his bag for the thing Remus had made, and flexed his tail around to where he could reach it. It took a couple of minutes to put the wand holder on his tail and get it strapped in place, then he put his wand in place.

"What _are_ you doing?" Su Li asked.

"I want to see if I can cast with my wand on my tail," Harry replied, tightening the strap which held his wand in the holder.

"But you don't even have it touching you like that," the Ravenclaw frowned. "Wouldn't that make it work less well?"

"Well, in Herbology we always have those gloves," Neville pointed out, from Harry's other side. "Those are magic resistant, and they still let you cast spells."

"Oh, good point," Su agreed. "Still, why do it?"

Harry moved his tail down so his wand was just about to touch the snail, then waved it three times and muttered the incantation. There was a little flash of light from his wand, and the snail changed shape _most_ of the way into a teapot – though the spout wiggled a bit, and there was a definite sliminess about it.

"I want to be able to cast spells while I'm walking on all fours," Harry explained. _"Reparifarge."_

The reversal spell worked better, maybe because he'd done it more recently, and he was left with a slightly bemused snail.

Su turned to her own snail, and transfigured it into a teapot with a swirled pattern like the shell of the snail.

"Not a bad start, Miss Li," Professor McGonagall said. "Though you must try your best to ensure that no traits of the snail remain."

"Yes, Professor," Su replied, reversing the transfiguration to try again.

Harry tried again, doing his best to visualize a completely transformed teapot. It worked this time, with the whole teapot being an even black and not the least bit slimy, and he let out a sigh of relief.

It looked like he _could_ cast spells with his wand on his tail, which meant the next thing to try and learn was _aiming._

It wasn't really urgent, though, so it could probably wait until the next time there was a fire-fight. (Harry was quite looking forward to it – snow fights were all well and good, but so were fire fights, and they felt a bit more _dragony_.)

* * *

The weather got better as they moved through January, and Harry was quite glad of it. He might not care much about cold (or rain, really), and snow was a positive good, but when doing Quidditch practice it was harder to keep coordinated with everyone if it was difficult just to _see_ them halfway down the pitch.

Fred and George were having a great deal of fun whatever the weather, of course, flying around on their new top-of-the-line brooms and sending the Bludger all over the place – Harry wondered if maybe future brooms would be _faster_ than the Bludger, and whether they had to turn the speed of the Bludger up when brooms got better.

It was the first really sunny Saturday of the year when Ron first tried out his present from Harry, and sent a model rocket four hundred feet into the air. It would have gone higher, but Nora caught it in her muzzle before bringing it back – still sizzling out smoke and flame from the nozzle – and depositing it at his feet so she could go and play Fetch again.

The fact that the rocket immediately shot off straight into the Black Lake – and that Nora plunged in after it, before bringing back the soaking rocket with a kind of gunpowder sludge in it – was probably a sign that Harry needed to teach Hagrid the dragonish for 'leave it alone'.

Or teach Nora the English for it. Either would probably work.

* * *

When the first Astronomy lesson of February rolled around, Harry noticed that the timing of the full moon that month was right about midnight on Saturday – just a few minutes before it turned into Sunday.

He sent a letter to Professor Dumbledore asking if he could leave the school that night, and he was going to send a letter to Sirius as well but then he remembered something he'd got from the shop in Diagon Alley months ago. So instead he put one of his pair of mirrors in the letter, with a note explaining what it was, and sent it off with Hedwig.

The next evening the mirror heated up, something Harry only just noticed, and he looked at it to see Sirius was peering into it. Remembering the instructions, he went down to the common room – it was pretty much empty that late at night – before tapping it with his wand to answer.

"_You know, I completely forgot that James and I had a set of these?"_ Sirius asked, sounding distinctly embarrassed. _"Next time you see me, we can swap them around and you can have another set for yourself."_

"That's okay," Harry assured him. "I don't mind if you keep yours. I just got this set because I saw them in a shop and it sounded like a good idea."

"_Oh, they are a good idea,"_ Sirius agreed. _"James and I used them to communicate when we were in different detentions-"_ he coughed. _"Anyway. You said you had something you wanted to talk about?"_

"That's right," Harry agreed, propping up the mirror. "It's going to be the full moon, soon, and I thought maybe I could help Moony. I've learned that spell that I mentioned."

"_It'd be great if you could,"_ Sirius agreed, but he was clearly thinking. _"You know, I don't think we ever tried to see if someone could cast spells in animal form..."_

"Why?" Harry asked.

"_Never really had anything worth doing that we couldn't just turn back to human for,"_ Sirius shrugged. _"But, well… Moony is a bit hard to handle once he's transformed. When he's around transformed Animagi he's calm enough, but if there's a human around as well he can be pretty violent."_

He looked down, and his voice got a bit husky. _"I… nearly made a very big mistake, back during our time at school, because of that."_

Harry sort of wished he could give Sirius a hug through the mirror.

"_It's worth trying,"_ Sirius added. _"It really is worth trying. And you're a dragon, so who even knows if you can be infected with being a werewolf at all."_

"We do know how to treat werewolf bites," Harry pointed out. "It's in the Defence textbook from last year. Normally the problem is that you don't know that a werewolf is going to bite you, right?"

Sirius chuckled. _"I suppose that's true."_

"Besides," Harry added. "Couldn't you just get him some Wolfsbane?"

Sirius blinked. _"Some what?"_

"It's a potion that means that when you transform you _just_ transform," Harry said, trying to remember the book he'd read it in – one of the ones about modern magical inventions. "So you keep your mind, and stuff. I think it's really complex."

"_Hold on a moment,"_ Sirius requested, and put the mirror down. Harry faintly heard him bellow _'MOONY!'_ and less than ten seconds later Remus came running down the stairs with his wand out.

"_What's wrong?"_ he asked. _"Are we under attack? Is Harry all right?"_

"_Harry's fine, what about you?"_ Sirius replied. _"What's this I hear about there being a potion that helps werewolves?"_

"_I'd almost forgotten about that,"_ Remus said, then blinked. _"Why is that urgent?"_

"_I'm as rich as Croesus, you twit!"_ Sirius retaliated. _"I. Can. Buy. You. Wolfsbane."_

"_But it's not a big problem,"_ Remus countered. _"Not really. Is it? My, um, Moony side is going to be calmed down because there'll be a transformed Animagus there. We know that works, and it's less expensive-"_

"_Harry, tell him what you told me,"_ Sirius interrupted, picking up the mirror again.

"You mean the bit about how Professor Lockhart taught me the spell that can revert a werewolf back to being human?" Harry asked. "I haven't tried it on anyone yet, though."

"_Well… right,"_ Remus said, blinking. _"Now I have three ways to deal with my little problem and I'm not sure which is best."_

"_I think Moony and I are going to be having a long talk,"_ Sirius said. _"Contact me whenever you want, Harry, I won't mind."_

Harry nodded, and the mirror changed so it was just reflecting him.

It was amazing the things you could forget to mention sometimes.

* * *

After several back-and-forth messages, Remus and Sirius decided that they would try out the spell _next_ full moon in March – making sure that Remus was dosed up on Wolfsbane potion first, to make it properly safe.

That way, Harry could see if the charm worked, and if it didn't then the worst that would happen was that Remus would be a bit disappointed.

* * *

That month, the Quibbler had a new feature.

Hermione seemed to be sort of disappointed whenever she saw that Harry was still getting the Quibbler, but – as he pointed out when she did – it was really cheap by Muggle standards, and it was usually good for a smile.

The new feature, however, even got Hermione interested. There'd always been a puzzle section, but this month it had expanded to fill out four two-page spreads, and it was full of everything from crosswords to wordsearches to complex number games – but the really tricky thing was a puzzle in the middle of the second spread which had nothing but a string of numbers next to it.

It took them both all of breakfast to fully solve just a couple of the puzzles on other pages, and then Hermione noticed that the remaining letters on the wordsearch they'd done spelled out:

_The word for this puzzle is Canoe._

Hermione seemed torn between excitement and exasperation as she realized that the entire puzzle section was a giant set of ways to find the clues for the _middle_ puzzle. The wordsearch was puzzle number four, so 'Canoe' was the word represented by the number four on the numbers-only puzzle.

It sort of made Harry's head hurt a bit, but in a different way to the way Quibbler articles normally did. So that was probably an improvement.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Sphinx roommates are great for suggesting tricky puzzles.


	29. Varying Levels Of Not Human

On Wednesday the tenth, a few days after the full moon (which had been tiring for Remus but not apparently as bad as they had been in previous years), Percy asked for Harry, Neville and Ron to come with him for a talk.

They picked up Dean, Hermione and Ginny in the common room, and headed out to one of the many disused classrooms that filled Hogwarts. This one looked like it _might_ have been an old Astronomy classroom, with a sheet-covered orrery in the corner of the room and star charts plastered all over the walls and the ceilings.

Harry wasn't _certain_ it was an Astronomy classroom, though. It could have been a Divination one.

"So I imagine you're wondering why I called you all here today," Percy said, clasping his hands behind his back.

"Kind of," Ginny admitted. "I'm also wondering why Fred and George _aren't_ here."

"What?" Percy asked, a little distracted, then sighed. "I know you're in here."

"No you don't!" Fred shouted from behind the orrery.

"Well, now he does," George grumbled.

Percy waited for several seconds.

"Are either of you actually going to come out from behind there?" he tried.

"Nope," George said. "It's quite comfy here."

"We're quite happy where we are," Fred agreed. "I can see all the outer planets, like Jupiter and Neptune and Saturn and-"

"Anyway," Percy interrupted them, sighing. "As I was saying. I called you all here today to give you advance notice of something that _might_ get into the papers."

"Why us?" Ron asked. "I get that about half of us are your family, but..."

"Oh, that's simple," Percy told him. "Harry's..."

The words trailed off.

"Not so simple after all?" Fred asked, trying not to laugh.

"It all made sense when I got them," Percy replied. "Besides, it would spoil the sense of drama."

"Drama?" Neville repeated. "Why drama?"

"And can there not be _too _much dramatic tension? We _were_ in the middle of doing homework," Hermione added.

"Hang on, _you_ were in the middle of doing homework," Dean corrected. "Some of the homework from _third_ year so you could decide what subject you wanted to do. And _Ginny_ was in the middle of doing homework. I was just sitting there because I had to pick an armchair somewhere while Nev and Ron were getting too into chess."

"As if," Hermione sniffed. "I'm not trying to decide which subject to do in Third Year. I already know, and it's all of them."

"Isn't that impossible?" Ron asked. "I mean, just in terms of workload."

"Percy got twelve OWLs in fifth year," Fred said. "Because he's a massive nerd."

"Thirteen if you count Hermes," George added.

"Ooh, good one," Fred complimented him.

Percy visibly decided to cut to the chase, and he did so in what Harry thought was a very effective way that was still almost as dramatic as he'd said he wanted to be.

He turned into a heron.

"...blimey," Ron said, after several seconds of silence. "Is that why you've been quiet?"

The heron nodded, and Harry noticed that there was a splash of flaming-red forming the crest along the top of his head instead of the black that a normal heron had. Then there was another blur of transformation, and Percy was standing there again.

"That idea about going to somewhere where there are thunderstorms every day was very helpful," he told Hermione. "Professor McGonagall helped out, of course, and I had my first transformation two days ago."

"That's amazing, mate," Dean said. "We only talked about this at Christmas. You've done all that in that short of a time?"

"Well, yes, but it wasn't _that_ hard, really," Percy told him, going a little pink. "Professor McGonagall says she thinks it might revolutionize the Animagus transformation, it's so much quicker to do it this way without having to wait for a lightning storm."

"Well, now I _really_ want to do it," Ginny said. "How old do you have to be to become an Animagus?"

Harry was frowning to himself, trying to remember something he'd read, then snapped his claws together as it came to him.

"Issola," he pronounced.

Everybody else looked at him. Even the Twins stuck their heads out from under the dust sheet covering the orrery.

"What's one of those when it's at home?" Fred asked.

"More to the point, what's one of those when it's at Hogwarts?" George added. "And is it a thing at all?"

"It's from a book," Harry explained. "There's this book series where there are seventeen kind of noble houses, only one of them is actually more like a gang, and they each have an animal as their symbol. Like the Hawk, or the Phoenix, or the Teckla."

"What's a Teckla?" Neville asked.

"It's a mouse," Harry explained. "A lot of them are kind of odd, they don't always use the same word for things we do. So they call something a Dzur but we'd call it a panther."

"So what _is_ an Issola, then?" Ron said.

"It's a heron, isn't it?" Ginny realized. "That's why you said it now."

Harry nodded. "There's this poem about what each kind of person tends to do, and for them it's, um… Issola strikes from courtly bow. So they're all about being proper and correct and still, showing respect and so on, and then you're reminded that they still have a sharp beak."

He shrugged his wings. "Anyway, I thought that it might be a good Marauder Name. Like how Sirius Black is Padfoot, and my father was Prongs."

Percy seemed to be considering it.

"Do you mind if I borrow those books?" he asked. "They sound interesting."

* * *

Over the next few days, Harry occasionally overheard George and Fred talking about whether they could trade off the speaking role so that only one of them had to speak much during the month that the other one was charging their mandrake leaf.

Apparently the problem with that was just that it would mean their first Animagus transformations weren't synchronized, or that the one who went first would have to use the Animagus sensitization spell for a solid month which sort of took away the point of doing it quickly.

The Twins being the Twins, they were busily talking about whether they could solve the whole problem by inventing a new kind of mouth, or maybe using a spell to produce sounds without needing to speak. It sounded like a lot of effort to go to, to Harry, and he was still wondering if there was a simpler way to get around the problem when the fourteenth of February arrived.

* * *

The Great Hall that Sunday morning was full of big pink flowers, of a kind of pink Harry wasn't really sure was actually natural, and it was raining heart-shaped confetti.

It took Harry a moment to remember that it was Valentine's Day – he certainly couldn't remember them doing this last time – and he shrugged before opening one of the books he had on the go.

He'd barely got more than a couple of pages further into _Martin the Warrior_ (and only tried one slice of fried egg garnished with heart-shaped confetti) when Professor Lockhart stood to speak.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" he shouted, and Harry saw that he was wearing robes the same sort of couldn't-be-natural pink. "And thank you to the forty-three people who have so far sent me cards! I hope you all enjoy the little surprise I've arranged for you all!"

"Doesn't look like the teachers do," Dean muttered, and Harry did notice that Professor Snape looked like he was trying to squeeze something invisible very hard.

Maybe he was trying to do what Darth Vader did in Star Wars – Harry didn't think there was a spell for that, but Professor Snape might not let that stop him if he got annoyed enough.

"And it doesn't end here!" Lockhart went on, clapping his hands, and a dozen dwarves wearing golden wings and carrying harps trooped in through the doors with expressions of disdain.

The Defence teacher explained how the 'cupids' would be going all around the school delivering valentines, and some other things, but Harry was sort of distracted by the dwarves.

He'd already discovered that some of the most unlikely things from the Lord of the Rings books had turned out to be real – dragons were obvious, though Mr. Tolkien hadn't quite got some of the details right, but Horcruxes were certainly real even if that wasn't the word the author used for the One Ring. And now there were dwarves as well?

Maybe they were like the Dwarves in the Hobbit, scattered away from their original home and having to take jobs they didn't like. That was sort of a sad thing to think about, because they didn't really look like they were enjoying their current jobs.

* * *

It was probably quite a good thing that it was a Sunday, and there weren't any lessons, because enough Dwarves came barging into the common room to deliver their messages that Harry couldn't really imagine how any of the lessons could have gone without at least one visit. It seemed terribly embarrassing for the people involved, as well, though Harry did have an idea of how to find out the answers to some of his questions.

After one of the Dwarves had delivered an anonymous valentine to the Seventh-Year female Prefect, shouting it up the stairs at her from the bottom of the spiral staircase, Harry had accosted him as he began to stomp back to the portrait hole.

"What is it?" the Dwarf asked. "You've got one too?"

He looked Harry up and down. "You're an odd one. You'd be that 'Arry Potter bloke."

"Last time I checked," Harry agreed, who thought it was a sort of Dumbledoreish way to reply. "I was wondering how Dwarves live. I've never read much about you."

"Mostly we live somewhere else," the Dwarf replied with a shrug. "And not doing stuff like… this."

He shook his head. "Still. It's work."

"What's the somewhere else like?" Harry asked, still interested. "Do you live underneath mountains?"

"My mum does," the Dwarf agreed. "It's bloody cold up in Norway, I'll tell you..."

"So you're not trying to gain enough support to go and reclaim the ancestral halls of the King Under the Mountain?" Harry said, obscurely disappointed.

"No," the Dwarf told him. "Where do you get all these ideas?"

"Muggle books," Harry admitted. "I was hoping there were some interesting answers to what Dwarves are like."

They reached the portrait hole, and the Dwarf clambered out. "Ancestral halls… tch."

* * *

By the middle of the afternoon it seemed like the Dwarfs had sort of lost what little enthusiasm they'd had for the whole thing.

It turned out they were Dwarfs with an f, not Dwarves with a ve, which was something else Harry had been uncertain about. One of the others was a bit more willing to talk, and he explained that there _had_ been a time when Dwarfs lived in underground mines and had their own societies, but that had sort of gone away about a hundred years ago when Muggles got better at mining. These days they mostly got work in the construction business, as they had magical ways to dig better than most people and you couldn't exactly bring a big Muggle digger onto the grounds of somewhere like Longbottom House for a month, but there wasn't much need for it in the winter which was why they were doing this sort of thing.

He said it had sounded a lot more fun when they'd agreed to do it than when they'd actually started to do it.

The last valentine Harry heard being delivered was by a Dwarf who was clearly thinking about being able to take the wings off, and who marched up to Kenneth Towler – who was in the same year as Fred and George, and took on a distinctly hunted look – before clearing his throat.

"Here is your valentine," he declared, in a voice remarkably devoid of inflection. "you are the most amazing person i have always admired you from afar and i wish i could tell you this to your face but i just wanted you to know that um are you writing this down or will you just remember the whole thing okay i that is i wanted you to know that i am always thinking of you."

The moment that was said, he took the wings off and put the harp down before marching smartly out the door.

The harp was tasty, at least.

* * *

"Are you sure this is safe?" Neville asked, a little worried.

"Don't worry," Harry assured his friend. "I don't think Ron's ever got this spell wrong, and I'm going to keep you safe from it anyway."

"I… guess that's okay, then," Neville said.

"Hey, don't worry," Dean told him. "We don't know who Ron's going to be aiming for. It might be me."

"Ready?" Hermione asked, looking down for a moment at a neat set of boxes she'd drawn on a piece of parchment with a ruler.

"Yep!" Ron agreed, raising his wand, and Harry nodded as well – his own wand back in the holder strapped to his tail.

"Whenever you're ready, then," Hermione said.

Ron stayed still for a moment longer, then pointed his wand. _"Rictusempra!"_

Harry's left wing flicked up, blocking Neville and Ron from seeing one another, and the tickling charm bounced off the black leather of his wings in a shower of sparks.

Ron's wand moved across in the other direction, pointing at Dean this time, and Harry tensed his wings ready to block.

Then Ron switched back to Neville, throwing a second Tickling Charm at him, and Neville jumped as Harry only just got his wing up in time.

Dean wasn't so lucky, getting hit and knocked backwards a little by the force of the spell, and started giggling until Ron cancelled the spell again.

"That's two out of three, so far," Hermione noted. "Okay, Harry, let's see how you do."

Ron gulped theatrically, and Harry tried to concentrate.

He'd done a lot of casting at things with his tail, but it was still tricky…

"_Tarantallegra,"_ he cast, and a jet of light flashed out to hit next to Ron's feet.

The second casting hit him, sending his legs dancing around until Hermione dispelled it, and Harry's third spell went a little bit high.

"Why aren't we doing Disarming Charms for this?" Ron asked. "We did that months ago."

"Because if we used Disarming Charms then whoever was casting would have to give the wand back to whoever _wasn't_ casting after every successful hit," Hermione told him primly. "You're lucky I read about this way of training how to shoot things. Most people just sort of have to learn by luck."

"Isn't that what we're doing now?" Dean asked, as Ron fired another Tickling Charm at him and Harry blocked it with his wing.

"Of course not!" Hermione replied. "We're taking _notes_. Keeping score."

She frowned. "Ron, I think that last one wouldn't have hit even if Harry hadn't blocked it."

"Yeah, probably not," Ron admitted. "Okay, let's try this again..."

It was the sort of thing Harry thought they should probably be doing in Defence Against the Dark Arts, but because they weren't it seemed like a good idea to do it in their own time instead.

Maybe it would catch on.

* * *

It was several days after that – almost at the end of February – when Hermione told Harry that she'd managed to get permission for him to visit the Scottish dragon reserve.

Oliver Wood wasn't all _that_ happy about the idea that Harry would be going off the next Sunday, missing out on some practice time, but Fred quickly pointed out that Harry's record in catching the Snitch was really good and so he shouldn't really complain. George weighed in by saying that that was one out of one, which was a hundred percent, and then they got sort of sidetracked for a while about whether you could really do statistics on a number like that.

The practical upshot of it all, though, was that Harry set off early that Sunday morning to fly to the Hebridean island of North Uist.

It was quite cold, but there wasn't any mist – which was good – and Harry flew steadily over the sea to Skye. He checked his map sitting on top of one of the Cuilin mountains, comparing it to what he could see around him, then decided he was looking in the right direction and took off again.

Harry did know that he would have been quite a lot faster if he'd brought his broom along, but it wouldn't have been nearly as _fun_. He flew low over Portree, turning almost due west there and flying diagonally across the island, then raced down the hillside to the sea and struck out with his wings alternately beating the air for speed and hanging out stiff to glide.

It felt great to really stretch his wings for a long-distance flight, and he was almost sorry when the Outer Hebrides hove up out of the sea about twenty-odd miles later. Harry picked a high spot to land, bleeding off his accumulated speed to gain height instead, and touched down on a high rocky hill overlooking a great miles-wide expanse of little islands and black water.

Checking the map again, Harry decided there was only really one possible candidate for where he had to go. The Scottish Reserve was Unplottable, but that didn't make it hard to find if you were smart – the map was just a careful depiction of all the places in the area of the reserve that the reserve _wasn't_, and since it was a fairly hefty island hidden from Muggle view it didn't take Harry much time to realize that it had to be the half-mile-high cliff face where his map showed open water.

There wasn't really another way to hide enough land for a dragon population in the Hebrides.

* * *

After a quick misunderstanding where Harry had to explain that, yes, he _was_ the one who was coming to visit the Clan MacFusty, and no, he _wasn't_ an escaped juvenile, he was then introduced to the Clan as a whole.

Every one of them was a witch or a wizard, on a kind of smooth continuum from tough-looking twentysomethings not long out of Hogwarts with a patchwork of minor creases and scars all the way to the clan heads (who looked like they'd heard that you were supposed to get weaker as you aged and decided to sidestep the whole process by turning directly into teak).

A lot of them reminded him of Charlie, or perhaps Hagrid, in how they thought about the dragons they took care of.

After he'd met everyone, except Mathias MacFusty who was off in Canada doing something or other, he was led down a stone-floored path into the interior of the island by a middle-aged witch called Astrid MacFusty.

"This way," she told him, pointing out one of the crofts. "That's where my grandfather used to live. And down here is where we keep Niall, he's a little older than most now and a little easier with strangers."

She chuckled. "It's a full time job keeping so many Hebridean Blacks happy in a small space, I'll tell you now…"

"The book I read said that Hebridean Blacks needed as much as a hundred square miles of territory per dragon," Harry agreed. "I did wonder how you could fit many into the Hebrides, they're not _that_ big."

"Well, we have our ways," Astrid told him. "Trade secrets, you ken?"

They were just reaching a wooden gate, and she opened it before holding it open for him.

"It's to keep the sheep and the deer in," she explained. "It all goes more smoothly if they each have their own animals, rather than trying to steal them from one another."

Harry nodded, then looked up as a pair of big black batlike wings spread atop a nearby hill.

Niall jumped, hammering the air for a single mighty downbeat, then came gliding down to alight with a thump in front of Harry and Astrid – sending the nearby sheep bleating and running in all directions. His mouth opened in a snarl as brilliant purple eyes regarded Harry, and a coil of smoke came rising gently out of the maw.

"Calm, now, Niall," Astrid said, one hand out to the side, and the bigger dragon huffed at Harry. He got sniffed, and then Niall snorted before accepting a sheep Astrid pulled towards her with magic.

"It's nice to meet you," Harry said.

"Now that's nae a thing I've ever heard before," Astrid admitted, which at least let Harry know he was speaking Dragonish rather than English.

Niall didn't seem to even notice, blasting the sheep with a jet of flame and then starting to eat a little messily.

"Can you understand me?" Harry asked, trying again. "Hello?"

Niall finished his sheep, and walked away to lie down for a nap.

"Did you get anything?" Astrid asked. "I don't know I'd have noticed the hissing if he'd done it, and all."

"No, nothing," Harry replied.

"Well, maybe Niall's a quiet sort," Astrid mused. "We'll try Flora."

* * *

It was a troubled Harry that set off to fly east that afternoon, away from the setting sun.

He'd been shown around most of the reserve, and met almost every single one of the dragons the Clan MacFusty took care of, but not one of them had either spoken Dragonish where he could hear them or even noticed him when he was speaking in Dragonish – except maybe as a noise.

Why would an entire reserve full of dragons _not_ speak Dragonish?

* * *

Hermione seemed quite confused by the report, which at least made Harry feel a little bit better… or perhaps that should be a little bit more justified in feeling odd about it all, because Hermione was really very smart and she was just as lost as he was.

They wrote up what had happened and sent it off in a letter to Charlie, in the hopes that Ron's second-oldest brother would have some idea what to think about it, but apart from that there really wasn't anything else that came to mind.

Harry did go and have a long session teaching Hagrid Dragonish, this time as a conversation with Nora about colours and shapes, just to make sure that he hadn't been imagining things for the last several months, but while that did work it also led to the discovery that Nora liked incinerating coloured wooden blocks.

* * *

On the first Sunday of March, Harry decided to help Percy out by taking him for a flight over the castle.

In spite of having had his new form for over a month now, Percy had been a bit reluctant to take to the air, and Harry was all too glad to quietly talk him through how flying with wings worked – from where you could find the occasional dangerous downdraft to what the best angle was to glide with.

It was quite nice just to be able to teach _Percy_ something he hadn't been confident about from the start, making gentle circuits around Hogwarts and the surrounds and explaining how to shed speed and height at the same time, or how to flare so your touchdown was slower and more gentle and it didn't strain your legs as much.

Percy definitely seemed nervous at first, but as they landed and took off and circled without any disastrous crashes it seemed as though he was starting to relax into it.

As they were coming down for a water landing, though, Harry noticed that Professor Dumbledore was sitting in a boat right by the lake shore. He was having some sort of conversation with what Harry supposed must be a merperson, with grey skin and dark green hair, and as they flew past the Professor broke off his conversation to wave merrily at them before continuing to talk as though nothing had happened.

Harry decided to be polite and ignore it.

"Okay, Percy," he said. "So the good thing about landing on water is that you can use the water to slow you down..."

* * *

That evening, Harry went up to Professor Dumbledore's office, and then through the Floo to Grimmauld Place.

"Harry!" Sirius announced, drawing him in for a hug. It took a lot of doing, given Harry's unusual body shape, but Sirius had clearly been thinking about it a lot and it actually sort of worked. "How have you been? How's Quidditch?"

"Wet," Harry replied, once Sirius finally let go and he could drop to the floor again. "Oliver Wood says that if we train in the rain, we'll go faster if we play in the sun and our robes are dry."

Sirius snorted.

"Everything okay with – with _Professor _Snape?" he asked. "Any more of your friends become Animagi?"

"I'm pretty sure we were talking last night," Harry said, confused. "Didn't we talk about most of this?"

"I've heard about how uncles are supposed to do this sort of thing," Sirius shrugged. "Admittedly I'm sort of guessing. Aunts are meant to do the kiss-you-on-the-cheek thing, but I'm not an aunt."

"But you aren't serious," Harry said, and was pleased when Sirius did a double-take before sniggering.

"That's a new one. Nice one, Harry."

That gave Harry a warm glow, and he followed Sirius through the house to a second-floor bedroom. Remus was there already, seated on a wooden chair with a big pile of somewhat-damaged pillows on the floor in front of it, and he nodded to Harry.

"I'm glad you could get off school for this," he said, self-consciously adjusting the long sheet he was wearing.

"I should be back by midnight," Harry replied, wanting to assure him it wasn't a big problem. "Professor Dumbledore says it's okay – and I want to help, if I can."

"I'm very grateful," Remus told him. "And Sirius, you'd better pay attention – next full moon night is Tuesday evening."

"Why is that?" Sirius asked. "Aren't they usually about four weeks apart?"

"This one's actually got the full moon tomorrow morning, about nine AM," Remus explained. "Next one has it Tuesday evening."

"Right, right," Sirius nodded. "When do you transform?"

"About ten minutes," Remus replied, glancing at the clock. "I've never done it on Wolfsbane before. It should be interesting..."

* * *

They made small talk for the next few minutes, mostly about little things none of them had thought to mention by mirror, and then Remus winced.

"Okay, I… think it's starting," he said, and got quickly off the chair.

Sirius transformed into Padfoot in an eyeblink, and pushed Harry back a bit – just in case the Wolfsbane didn't work.

Harry watched, fascinated, as Remus changed shape. It wasn't the blurring transition that an Animagus had, but it was quick – his face elongated into a muzzle, his hands became paws, and hair sprouted as his shoulders changed and he took on a four-legged form.

It seemed like his wrist changed position, lengthening out into a third arm bone, and as it did the sheet slid off and revealed the full extent of the transformation.

Incongruously, Harry noticed that – though he was otherwise a _lot_ like a wolf – he had a tufted tail.

Remus panted for several long moments afterwards, then looked around – inspecting his own body, and reaching up a paw to feel his muzzle.

"Does that mean it's worked?" Harry asked. "Are you okay?"

A nod was his answer, and Remus was starting to sit down on his haunches when a yawn suddenly hit him – he raised his paw to cover his mouth, which was a very human gesture, and Padfoot nodded before changing back.

"Still all right?" Sirius asked, voice hushed, and Remus nodded again. "Then – let's try that spell. Does that sound all right?"

Remus – or Moony? Harry wasn't sure which name to use – nodded again, and Harry transferred his wand into one paw before approaching.

He waved it up and down, in the motion Professor Lockhart had said was right, and touched the tip gently to Moony's throat.

"_Homorphus,"_ he incanted, and there was a little flash of light.

Moony yelped suddenly, eyes widening, then the transformation began to reverse itself. It started at the paws, flowing in pulses as fur receded and fangs shrank, and the quickly-reverting werewolf snatched up the sheet again and dove under it.

For several seconds, Harry and Sirius stared at the sheet as it shifted and rippled before finally going still.

"Are you okay, Moony?" Sirius asked.

"Can someone _please_ get me some underwear?" Remus replied, sounding dreadfully embarrassed.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Percy is hardly going to be an underachiever, is he?

The dwarfs are on a bit of a lark, but it turned out... a bit differently to how they were hoping.


	30. A Dragon Hunter

Once Remus had been supplied with clothing, Harry stayed around long enough to tell Sirius just how to cast the spell and then went back through the Floo. Remus had already decided that he was going to have to find out whether the spell worked just for that month or if it was permanent, and all that Harry could do was to say that _Wanderings with Werewolves_ hadn't actually said whether or not the Wagga Wagga Werewolf was permanently cured or not – Lockhart had left town before the next full moon.

Remus said he'd do his best to find the answer, then yawned, and that was when Harry had decided that Sirius had the spell right and gone back to Hogwarts.

It wasn't even midnight yet, which meant that Harry was fairly sure he'd be awake on time tomorrow morning.

* * *

Defence was still all about covering what was in Professor Lockhart's books, and Harry did sort of hope that they'd get to the practical side of things sooner or later – it wasn't that long before the Easter Holidays, and if the next term was all about practicals then… well, then it would be a lot like it had been in first year, actually.

Still, it would be nice to actually learn Defence spells in _Defence_ instead of being taught the odd one by Professor Flitwick, like the Disarming Charm which seemed quite elegant to Harry. Dean had this idea that you could probably turn _most_ charms into a Defence spell just by casting it really hard, and casting a spell really hard was certainly something Dean was good at, but Harry would much rather have a few spells to deal with different situations. (Despite what some dragons in books thought, and despite what Seamus Finnegan seemed to be unconsciously doing, not everything could be solved by setting things on fire.)

Harry couldn't even train up with the others, because as the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff match got closer the amount of training Oliver Wood was making them do got more and more extensive. He even had to skip book club.

He had the vague sense that that should be against the school rules.

* * *

"All right, everyone," Oliver said, in the dressing room. "This is it."

He paused.

"Are you two all right?" he asked.

Both the Beaters shrugged more-or-less in unison.

"He's got a point," Katie admitted. "Usually you two copy what he's about to say."

"But since they're not," Oliver went on, much happier now, "It's the big one. The one we've all been waiting for."

"Aren't all the games equally important?" Harry asked, raising his paw. "It's a league game, not an elimination game. The only kind of Quidditch game that has finals is the world cup."

"Oh, don't _you_ start," Oliver muttered. "It's bad enough with the Terrible Twins offering commentary… anyway. This matters, because last time we took a beating flying against Hufflepuff. I'm not too proud to admit it – we need to make sure that doesn't happen, or our hopes at the Quidditch Cup end here."

Harry nodded.

"Harry, you go straight for the Snitch," Oliver added. "It might mean we're giving up a chance for a better score, but I'd rather that than take the risk that Diggory grabs the Snitch – it's a three hundred point swing."

That sounded simple enough to Harry, since he had a much better broom than before _and_ he wasn't going to be chased by a rogue Bludger this time. (Well, probably, anyway.)

"Fred, George, your job is to keep their Chasers under control," Oliver told them, pointing to one twin and then the other. "Girls, you're to-"

"What, we're 'Girls', but they're Fred and George?" Alicia interrupted. "Why?"

"Because if I say Weasleys they'll assume I'm talking about someone else," Oliver said firmly. "You need to keep the ball in their half of the pitch as much as possible – be aggressive, don't let them line up shots. I think last time we played Hufflepuff we were too defensive."

"And what's your job?" Katie said.

"He stops the ball going in the holes on that side of the field," Fred said.

Oliver sighed. "All right," he told them. "Let's go."

* * *

Harry took a quick flight around the pitch before the start of the game, wanting to get a sense for how the air felt. It was a bit damp, but the sun was out, and vapour was steaming off the grass – it felt like the air was dense, heavy with humidity, and that meant he could steer and flap more easily than normal.

To his surprise, Sirius was sitting in the crowd – smiling and waving a Gryffindor banner, looking like he was really enjoying himself. He winked at Harry as Harry went past, then flourished his wand and tapped the poster Dean was holding up.

The dragon on the flag animated, wings flapping, and shot after the Snitch that Dean had also painted on the banner. The little fleck of gold vanished off the side of the flag, chased by the dragon, and then came back in from all sorts of different directions before being chased off that way again.

Touched, Harry flew around in the other half of his familiarization flight before flaring to land with the rest of the team.

"I hope I don't need to tell you I want a good clean game," Madam Hooch said, to nods from both teams, and then released the Bludgers and the Snitch. She balanced the Quaffle on her palm, waiting until the regulation amount of time had passed, then threw it into the air.

Harry took off with a big wingbeat and all the speed in his Nimbus 2001 before anyone had caught the Quaffle. Fred and George were rocketing into the air as well, and there was a _whang_ as Fred hit a Bludger and sent it towards the Hufflepuff Chaser who'd managed to get a hold of the Quaffle.

Wings beating hard, Harry climbed up past the level of the goals as he looked around for the Snitch. He heard whoops and cheers from the crowd as the Quaffle went back and forth as the Hufflepuff Chasers tried to win ground, and as the Gryffindor Chasers kept denying them the chance.

Then he spotted something glittering gold behind the Hufflepuff goal ring, and twisted to rocket straight towards it.

Cedric, the Hufflepuff Seeker, saw what he was doing and turned to follow, but Harry was not much further away and his broom was quite a lot faster. It was close, but he snatched the Snitch out of the air just a second before Cedric reached it.

He _might_ have left a few tooth dents, but he extracted it from his mouth and held it up to show that, no, he hadn't actually swallowed it.

The Chaser battle stopped as everybody realized what had happened, and there was a kind of muttering in the crowd.

"Was that it!?" Blaise Zabini demanded. "I almost want a refund!"

"Sorry!" Harry called back. "The captain _said_ to catch the Snitch!"

For some reason that seemed very funny to everyone.

* * *

Sirius told Harry off (in an absolutely non-serious way, though it was a _Sirius _way) for not at least having the decency to break the world record for catching a Snitch – three seconds – before releasing him to the tender mercies of his housemates.

There was quite a party, including some things that Harry was _sure_ that Fred and George must have snuck into the castle, and it felt like it lasted at least two hundred times as long as the game had.

Though that wasn't exactly _hard_.

* * *

"Okay, I think we need to make an important decision," Ron said, the day before the end of term.

"We do?" Hermione asked. "Like what? How to do our homework?"

"Well… oddly, it's actually sort of related to that," Ron replied.

"How to make launching model rockets into homework?" Dean suggested. "Or maybe just making the Quidditch rules make sense?"

"Hey, Quidditch rules make sense," Ron protested. "Sort of. In a league structure."

He gave Dean a look. "I want to see England win the Quidditch World Cup one day, Dean, _don't take that away from me."_

"That would work," Neville said, looking at Harry.

"It would?" Harry asked.

"Well, it might," Neville mused. "It depends."

"Or, in a pinch, I get the Cannons to sign Harry for a season," Ron added. "Either or."

He tapped a foot on the floor. "If Harry has a top of the line broom, he's slightly faster and a _lot_ more agile than anyone else is because he can use his wings."

"You're suggesting just using him as a Snitch-seeking missile," Dean mused. "Could work. But speaking of World Cups, I've heard good things about England's chances for the 1994 World Cup so far – we've got two wins and two draws, and one of the wins was six-nil."

"No we haven't," Neville interrupted. "We lost to Transylvania, it was a three hour match yesterday."

"What?" Dean asked.

"He's _obviously_ talking about football, Neville," Hermione said, shaking her head. "Six-nil in Quidditch isn't even possible."

"Oh, good point," Neville admitted. "I keep forgetting there are other team sports."

"How do you know what's going on in Muggle sports?" Ron asked. "Don't radios and tellies not work here?"

"Hogwarts: A History says that RADAR and computers and things like that don't work at Hogwarts," Hermione confirmed. "But I know Dean asked Harry to get him a sports newspaper last time he went into Fort William."

"Hold on a minute," Dean asked. "Did you just say computers and stuff don't work at Hogwarts? How do they know?"

"They must have tested it," Hermione said. "Why?"

"Hermione, you've got a watch," Dean pointed out. "How does that work?"

"It's a clockwork one," Hermione told him, showing it off. "I asked for it because I read that electronics didn't work at Hogwarts."

Harry was quite impressed with the watch – just the bits he could see had all kinds of interesting gears visible – and he wondered if maybe he should get one.

Maybe a pocket watch would be better, though.

"That's funny," Dean said, pulling his own sleeve up to reveal _his_ watch. "Because this one's a cheap quartz one I got for about ten quid, and it works too."

"That's..." Hermione began, then paused. "Um. Odd?"

"Can we get back to the topic?" Ron asked.

"Oh, right, Quidditch," Neville nodded. "So you were wanting to-"

"No, the _original_ topic," Ron corrected him. "An important decision."

Harry couldn't even remember how long that had been the topic for, and said so.

"Well, it's about which of the extra subjects we can take next year we should take," Ron explained. "I think we should work out which one everyone's taking, so we know we're not going to be alone in any class."

"I've already made my choice," Hermione said. "I'm doing all of them."

"Like Percy did," Harry realized. "He did seem kind of stressed out by it, though."

Hermione frowned. "Well… he did get top marks in everything, and I didn't think he was stressed. So I think it's still a good idea."

Harry wasn't quite sure there would be enough hours in the day for that, but it _was_ Hermione's choice. And Percy _had_ managed it.

"What about you, Nev?" Ron asked.

"Oh, um… I was sort of thinking about Arithmancy," Neville replied. "That's all about predicting things with maths, and one of the things that means is… what was it, Hermione?"

"Reversing the process," Hermione answered promptly. "So you define what you want the magic to do, and then you solve the predictions to calculate what you need to do to _create_ that magical effect."

"That," Neville agreed. "And… well, I like the idea of a magic sword, I guess. I don't even know if you _can_ do it, but it seems like an Arithmancy thing."

"That's what I was thinking, too," Harry agreed. "Though I was thinking of doing Arithmancy and Runes, I'm not sure which of them it would be."

Neville frowned. "I… wasn't sure about Runes," he mused. "That might be my third choice. Muggle Studies is my second, because there's all kinds of cool stuff."

"Absolutely," Ron nodded, enthusiastically. "Dad likes Muggle stuff, and some of it sounds really cool. If there's more stuff like those rockets Harry got me, I'm all for it."

"It's a minimum of two, right?" Dean asked, and got nods. "I'm not really _sure_ about any of them, Muggle Studies sounds almost too easy, and all the others might be kind of hard… Care of Magical Creatures could be cool, and I could get behind doing Divination as well."

"Care of Magical Creatures is my third choice," Harry agreed, nodding. "It's sort of… _me_ studies, a bit, anyway."

"So that's Harry with three," Hermione said, writing all that down. "Arithmancy, Runes and Creatures?"

"That's right," Harry confirmed.

He was sort of interested in Divination as well, because he _was_ the subject of a prophecy, but he wasn't sure on that one. It might just leave him without enough free time…

"Maybe four," he said, so they knew he was thinking about it.

"Blimey, when did everyone turn into a workaholic?" Ron asked.

He paused, spotting how Hermione was looking at him (it sort of reminded Harry of how June looked when there was a particularly tasty steak in the offing), and amended himself. "I mean, when did everyone start being into doing a lot of work?"

"We met Hermione on the train," Dean opined. "We were already doomed."

"Fair point," Ron agreed.

"Two for Dean," Hermione added. "Creatures and Divination?"

"Probably," Dean said. "This isn't final, though, right?"

"You can change any time up until they send out the letters with what you need for next year, I think," Hermione told him. "Ask Fred and George, apparently they kept swapping things around. Neville, you were interested in two?"

"Two or three," Neville told her. "Arithmancy, Muggle Studies and maybe Runes."

"And Ron, you're going for Runes and Muggle Studies," Hermione finished. "Well, if nobody takes their Maybe subjects, that means there's going to be three of us in Creatures, three in Runes, three in Arithmancy, three in Muggle Studies and two in Divination."

"That's kind of neat, actually," Ron said. "Almost. Who was only doing two, could they do Divination as well?"

"I'm not doing Divination and Divination, mate," Dean snorted. "I don't think that's possible."

"I didn't mean you, I meant Neville," Ron said. "Though, no, your third preference is Runes… nah, I'm not doing Divination _just_ to make it all symmetrical and stuff."

* * *

After thinking about it a lot, and talking about it over the mirror with Sirius, Harry had decided that he wanted to stay in Hogwarts over the Easter Holiday. He knew he had somewhere he could go where he'd be welcome, which was a really nice feeling, but at the same time he had some magic _practice_ to do and that wasn't something he could do at Grimmauld Place.

Most of the Weasleys were going to be staying at Hogwarts as well, except – for some reason Harry didn't know – Fred and George, and of Harry's close friends only Dean was off back home.

Harry decided to test how good he was getting at flying fast by pacing the train as it pulled out of Hogsmeade station, which went well. His wings hurt a bit with how fast he had to fly, but he managed to keep up with the train until it was about to reach a tunnel, and then Harry pulled up instead of making a Harry-shaped hole in the hillside.

If he'd had a speed-ometer, he might even have been able to tell how fast he was going.

* * *

"The thing I don't get is how Dumbledore is okay with all of… this," Daphne said, waving her hand vaguely at the work she was doing for Defence. "How exactly is this good Defence work?"

She picked up a copy of _Witch Weekly_ with two fingers, as if it might smell. "Tell me what the assignment was, again, Tracy, I don't think I believe my own memories."

"We have to put together a collage of things that would make people confident in Gilderoy Lockhart," Tracy Davis replied absently. "Yeah, I know."

"Well, he does know his stuff," Harry said. "He taught me a spell which worked."

"I think that might be the first time he's taught _anyone_ a spell that worked," Daphne mused. "Ever asked any of the upper years about it? He's kind of evasive."

Harry slid his claw along one of the pages in his photocopied extracts of _Magical Me –_ which he'd duplicated more than a dozen times, to give as many people in his class as possible the chance to use book extracts. "I _do_ hope we do practical work next term."

Tracy scoffed, in a genteel sort of way.

"My housemates are just unconvinced of how good Lockhart really is," Blaise said, looking up from where he was carefully arranging half-a-dozen pictures of Lockhart on the page. "Myself, I think he's marvellous at what he does."

"How can you possibly think that?" Daphne demanded. "He hasn't taught us anything except theory, and most of that is about how to make people _like_ you instead of how to actually defend ourselves."

"Exactly," Blaise replied. "Think about it. What's he doing? He's _keeping a job teaching Defence_, but he's not actually _teaching Defence_."

"...I don't get it," Daphne admitted.

"He's clearly aware of the curse on the position," Blaise elaborated. "He's trying to find out if you can spend a whole year here if you don't actually teach _Defence_, just PR."

There was a silence as Harry and the two Slytherin girls considered that.

"I think I'm just going to assume he's an awful teacher," Daphne announced.

Harry's opinion on the matter was that at least he was better than Professor Quirrell, who was after all essentially a sort of Nazgul, but then a big black dog came bounding over the nearest hill.

"...Padfoot?" he asked, confused, and the dog loped over to him. "Are you serious?"

There was a blur, and Sirius was standing there instead. "How much time do you spend up thinking up versions of that pun?"

"Not all that long, actually," Harry replied, shrugging his wings. "It just sort of happens."

"So, you're Sirius Black," Blaise said, looking him up and down. "My mother would hate it if I didn't ask this question, so – are you single?"

"Currently," Sirius told him.

"Isn't your mother engaged?" Tracy asked.

"She believes in planning ahead," Blaise shrugged. "You have to when you enjoy Iocaine powder in your wine."

"Well, now I'm definitely not interested in _that_ particular relationship," Sirius mused. "Anyway, Harry, I wanted to tell you that I got a house in Hogsmeade. So I'll be able to visit more easily during school holidays."

He looked down at the piles of cut paper and stuff. "You look busy."

"Yeah, this is Defence homework," Harry explained.

"I'm… um… okay, sure," Sirius said. "Anyway. Do you trust these Slytherins?"

"...I'm tempted to say yes, but I know that that's something they'd find insulting," Harry replied.

"Well done, you're starting to understand Slytherins," Blaise told him.

"In that case, to avoid offending your Slytherins I'll wait to talk about this until later," Sirius decided.

"Excuse me?" Tracy said. "We are not _his_ Slytherins!"

"If anything he's our dragon," Daphne agreed, nodding. "He's Gryffindor, but we think that can be cured in time."

"How do you cure someone of being a Gryffindor?" Sirius asked, sounding interested.

"It should mostly wear off in a bit more than five years," Daphne told him.

Harry snorted.

* * *

Apart from homework, and magic practice with Sirius, and more catching up on books, Harry also spent a lot of time on the language and knitting lessons with Hagrid. He'd had to move on to using actual needles, but at the same time Hagrid had decided that he'd got good enough to start making a _thing_ instead of just randomly knitting bits of wool together.

Harry had the idea that maybe he should try and fix how some wizards thought about him, like Miss Umbridge or Mr. Malfoy, and it was with that in mind that he got hold of some green and silver wool and began knitting a pair of gloves.

Home made gifts were supposed to show you cared enough to put in the effort, after all, though the first glove Harry made (while listening to Hagrid and Nora having a halting conversation in Dragonish about what kinds of food she liked) was more of what Hagrid called a snood than anything.

Snood _was_ a good word, though. So that was sort of something to be proud of.

* * *

"Okay, get ready!" Harry heard Sirius instruct. "Your job is to try as hard as possible to hit Harry with your spells when he comes over the hill!"

"And what if we miss?" Hermione asked.

"Well, if you miss then Harry's done a good job dodging," Sirius shrugged. "Or you need to get better at aiming."

"And what if we _hit?_" Hermione continued. "How exactly will we know if Harry has been hit? He'll be moving too fast for anyone to tell."

"I assume Harry would notice," Sirius replied, then frowned. "Or… actually, that is a good point."

"So we won't know if we're hitting or not, and Harry won't know if he's dodging or not, and even if we did know that we wouldn't know if we were both doing well or both doing badly," Hermione summed up. "This is terribly unscientific."

"Um, well… yeah?" Sirius asked. "Science is a Muggle thing. This is Magic."

"That has nothing to do with it," Hermione sighed. "You tell him, Ron."

Harry adjusted his position a little so he was more comfortable.

"Honestly, I just do what the packet says," Ron replied. "I get how they found out all this stuff, but I don't get any of the details more complicated than 'they tried it, and it worked'."

"That's okay, that's sort of the point anyway," Hermione told him. "Science is about results. Testable, and repeatable, results. The fact that a wizard pointing their wand at someone and incanting 'Expelliarmus' will tend to result in a jet of red light that causes their target to lose whatever weapons they're currently carrying? That is a reliable, scientific result."

"...so magic is science?" Sirius said, sounding lost now.

"Science is a way of understanding things," Hermione told him. "It's about things being reliable."

"So _your_ magic is science, and mine isn't?" Neville asked.

"Your magic is no different from mine," Hermione assured him. "There's something involved that's making it harder for you to do magic, and whatever that is is _consistent_."

"Are we going to do the bit where Harry flies overhead and we try to hit him with spells?" Ron asked. "I thought that was why we're out here."

"Oh, very _well_," Hermione allowed. "If we must."

"Ready, Harry?" Sirius called.

"Ready!" Harry replied.

He spread his wings, tensed, and then took off.

Ron, Hermione and Neville all began throwing Disarming spells at him, and he climbed a bit higher to dodge. That turned out to be the wrong idea, as a red jet of light definitely seemed to hit him on the chest, and then another one splashed into his wing before he landed.

"Well done, um..." Sirius began, then stopped. "Harry, did you see who cast that?"

"I _told _you," Hermione grumbled.

Harry had to shake his head, but he was also thinking about how he'd been hit in the first place. It probably had to do with speed? Or how well his friends could predict where he was going to be, anyway…

Maybe the way Sirius had taught them all how to cast Stunning Spells was a bit of a problem. At least if everyone was using a different spell colour it would work a bit better.

He was about to take off to try again, but then he caught sight of something.

"Sirius?" he asked. "Is that Remus?"

"Remus?" Sirius repeated. "It might be – why would he be here?"

He spread his hands. "Sorry, kids, looks like I've got this to deal with."

"That's okay, Mr. Lord Black your highness," Neville replied politely. "We're glad you gave us help to begin with."

"...highness?" Sirius asked, sounding confused.

"I wasn't sure which of those things you were," Neville said. "So I guessed. Gran always says I shouldn't disrespect anyone who doesn't deserve it."

* * *

Harry and Sirius caught up with Remus at the castle door, accompanied by a man who looked like he was from one of the countries Uncle Vernon lumped together under "Foreign Parts". He had tired eyes, and yawned every so often, and as they headed to the stairs Remus introduced him as Michael.

"I met him in Wagga Wagga," he added, as they began to climb to the next floor of Hogwarts. "Harry, which of the offices is your Defence teacher using?"

"I… don't actually know," Harry admitted – he'd never had a detention, and he'd had to see other teachers outside school hours but never Professor Lockhart.

"All right, hold on a moment," Remus asked, and pulled a piece of fresh-looking parchment out of his robes.

He touched his wand to it. _"I'm lost."_

A map of Hogwarts erupted out from the point of his wand, and Sirius gave him a look.

"I'm lost?" he asked. "I'm _lost_? Is _that_ the activation phrase?"

"It's easier to remember than the old one," Remus replied absently, while Michael blinked owlishly and looked at the map.

"That's a pretty sweet piece of magic," he said, in an obvious Australian accent – Harry recognized it from _Neighbours_. "They didn't have anything like that at Wallamullah."

"It's kind of new for here," Remus told him, studying it. "The really difficult bit was making it work out where the offices were… ah, here it is. It's on the fifth floor."

He set off again, and Harry dropped back slightly to climb the stairs alongside Michael.

"Where's Wallamullah?" he asked. "Is that the Australian school of magic?"

"Australia and New Zealand both, right enough," Michael agreed. "It's hundreds of years old, they said in History class that it dated all the way back to the time the land was first sung. But it's changed a lot in the last few hundred years, so they say."

Harry was interested to hear more, and Michael began explaining. His mother had been from one of the old magical families of Australia, it seemed, and they'd been going to Wallamullah for at least twenty generations, but it was only after the arrival of Europeans a few hundred years ago that writing had come to the continent – before then it had all been oral tradition, handed down at Wallamullah by the best Witches and Wizards of the continent.

Wands were new, as well, comparatively speaking – before then all magic in Australia had been wandless – and that meant that Wallamullah had done a ten-year course, which they still did these days (and it took six to get an OWL).

It was all very strange to hear, sort of like a distorted mirror image of his own education at Hogwarts, and it kept Harry occupied at least until they reached Professor Lockhart's office.

* * *

Professor Lockhart didn't open the door for a couple of minutes, but when he did it was with a winning smile and his clothes and hair arranged _just so_. "Good morning! I see our castle has some visitors!"

He put a finger to his cheek, thinking. "So I recognize you, of course, Harry – and is that Sirius Black? You were all over the papers last year, lovely story, exactly the sort of thing people like to hear. But you need to work with it, not just let it fade away."

"I'm quite happy not having reminders of when my mistake led to the death of the man who was like a brother to me," Sirius growled.

It was actually very impressive. Harry had thought the most you could do with a growl was to go "grr", but Sirius had managed to growl an entire quite long sentence.

"That's what I'm saying!" Lockhart protested. "You need to shape the story, make it about how you've endured terrible hardship, you're so glad that justice has finally been done… people will love it."

Sirius seemed very annoyed by that, though Lockhart just kept smiling. "And I don't believe I've met either of these other gentlemen?"

"Remus Lupin," Remus said.

"Michael Freeman," the Australian added. "I've not met you before either, mate."

Somehow, the word 'mate' didn't seem to mean the same thing the way he said it to the way Ron said it.

"Well, if you're interested in autographs, I can certainly provide," Lockhart said, reaching for an enormous peacock quill. "Or if you want signed copies of the books?"

"That's not the problem, mate," Michael said, his accent suddenly sounding a lot stronger. "The problem is that I've _read_ your scummy book, an' it says you saved the village of Wagga Wagga from the terror of me attacks."

He advanced to poke Lockhart in the chest, despite the other man suddenly scrambling backwards. "Wagga Wagga ain't a village, and it wasn't no poncy blonde pom who stopped me doin' so much damage, neither."

"Well – I must say-" Lockhart said. "Books are always edited for better effect-"

"You wrote them!" Harry burst out, wings flaring for a moment before he pulled them back in again. "You said you were the one who did all those things! They'd be great fiction books, but you said they weren't!"

"My dear boy, you must understand," Lockhart went on, and Harry sort of noticed that Remus and Sirius had both got their wands out. "Nobody would want to read a book about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save villages from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover."

"Then put a werewolf on the front cover?" Harry suggested. "Wolfsbane got invented years ago now, you could take a photo of a werewolf _posing_."

"I mean, come on, Harry," Lockhart said, glancing nervously at the wands pointed at him. "There was a lot of research involved. I had to track these people down, and I had to do it before too many other people heard – then I had to get all the details, and, well – there's a lot of work involved! Especially in Memory Charming them so they wouldn't be inconvenient, and then in doing book signings, it's a long hard slog-"

Michael punched him, laying him out flat on the floor.

"You're a right bastard," he said.

"_Obliviate!"_ Lockhart retaliated, and the Australian man flinched back so fast he slipped and fell over – it looked like he did it quickly enough to not be hit by the spell, but Harry wasn't quite sure.

Lockhart sprang back to his feet, whirling around to face the others, and Sirius cast a stunning spell. The Defence Professor dodged it with surprising speed, which reminded Harry that Lockhart had once talked about being a Seeker, then pointed his wand at Sirius.

Harry raised his wing to protect his godfather, and the Memory Charm hit his wing membrane with a flash. Remus fired a Disarming Charm, sending Lockhart's wand into the air, and the teacher ducked back behind his desk before shoving a tall stack of books over it.

"Hey, that's _my _wand!" Michael yelped, and there was a thrashing noise which led to Lockhart going _oof_. Then Remus Transfigured the desk into a pig, which sent everything on it clattering to the floor and the pig running off into the office with another crashing noise.

Magical battles seemed a lot more complicated when they actually _happened_ than even duels were.

"_Expelliarmus!"_ Remus called again, and caught Michael's wand as it flew out of Lockhart's hand. "Harry, can you go and get Professor Dumbledore, please?"

"I'm not sure if he's in," Harry admitted. "I'm pretty sure Professor McGonagall is, though."

"That sounds fine," Remus said.

"Damn – look out!" Sirius called urgently.

Harry flared up both wings this time, in case Lockhart had managed to get hold of a _third_ wand, but instead he had pulled a broom from the debris on the floor. Harry hadn't ever seen a broom that looked anything quite like it, and Lockhart didn't bother getting astride it before starting the broom moving towards the window.

The panes of glass smashed as Lockhart's broom went through them, and Michael started saying something that didn't sound like English, but Harry was mostly focused on trying to catch _the man who'd tried to hurt Sirius and Remus_.

Already up, Harry's wings slammed down in a takeoff downbeat, and he closed his eyes for a moment as he went through the window after Lockhart.

* * *

Lockhart had managed to swing himself onto the broom properly by the time Harry was out of the window, and he was already accelerating away really fast – Harry had to work overtime to try and keep up, and he was wishing that he had his Nimbus 2001 to help make up the difference.

Fumbling for his wand, Harry cast the Stunning charm – then realized that it might knock Lockhart off his broom instead of just making him sink back to the ground.

It didn't hit, anyway – but it got close, and Lockhart only just dodged at the last second.

After thinking about it for a moment, Harry decided that he was close enough – and they were high enough up – that he could probably _catch_ Lockhart if he fell off his broom, and cast another stunning spell. That missed as well, and then something bright blue went blurring past Harry from the direction of the castle and exploded.

A powerful wind sprang up from nowhere, blowing them both towards the ground, and Harry adjusted first. He managed to ride the wind to get closer to Lockhart, not close enough to grab him but close, and breathed out a jet of brilliant blue flames at the man he _hoped_ wasn't going to be the Defence professor any more.

Lockhart dropped even lower to avoid being hit, though he did get splattered by some of the bluebell flames, and he was too busy trying to bat them off him to keep track of where he was going.

Harry heard the _thud_ as he hit the ground, and by the time Lockhart had got to his feet again Harry had landed on top of the broom.

"What's going on?" Hermione demanded, and Harry realized they'd ended up landing pretty close to where they'd been practicing earlier.

"Lockhart tried to memory charm Sirius," Harry summarized. "And he's a fake, he didn't do any of the things in those books!"

"Come now, Harry, there's no need to make anything up," Lockhart said, sounding like he was _trying_ to sound reasonable, and Neville pointed his wand at Lockhart.

"Don't say anything else," Neville insisted, his voice cracking slightly. "Or I'll try and stun you."

"Why haven't you stunned him already?" Ron asked. "Why haven't _I_ stunned him already?"

"If you try to stun him, you'll stun him," Neville said. "If _I_ try to stun him I don't know _what_ will happen."

Lockhart turned faintly green, which didn't go very well with his robes.

* * *

AN:

Wagga Wagga is a pretty big place, more than 50,000 people in 1996._ Not_ a village.

Also, different choices for electives.

As for the Australian school, I did my best to make it fitting. It's kind of a tradeoff between how fractured the pre-contact population was and how small it was, but I decided it would be interesting to have a pre-contact magical education site that developed into a modern school without losing the identity.

Michael Freeman is at least partly First Nations, though Harry doesn't really notice as such.


	31. A Not Particularly Consistent Education

Dumbledore, as it turned out, was indeed at Hogwarts.

Harry sort of stayed involved with the whole situation even after Dumbledore took it over, largely because he wanted to hear what had happened (and because nobody seemed to get around to telling him he shouldn't) and so he was there when Lockhart got taken away by the Aurors.

It sounded like he was in a lot of trouble, and Harry was perfectly okay with that.

After that, though, Dumbledore invited Sirius, Remus and Michael up to his office. Harry got brought along for the ride, and sat down on his haunches in the corner because there weren't any armchairs left.

"Well, now," Dumbledore said, after sitting down. "This is quite a pickle, isn't it?"

He paused. "Though I must admit I have never quite understood that term. I rather like pickles."

"I think the idea is that the situation is like _being pickled_," Sirius suggested, a little hesitantly.

"Ah, that sounds quite possible," Dumbledore agreed gravely. "As I say, I do like pickles, but not so much as to want to have the experience myself."

He adjusted his glasses slightly, and that reminded Harry to adjust his own in that funny way that being reminded about your glasses did.

"Gilderoy Lockhart was my mistake," he said. "The number of people who apply for the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher job is terribly scanty, so I do not often have much choice, but I dare say that it would have been slightly better to have no teacher at all than to have Gilderoy Lockhart as the teacher."

"I don't really think so, Professor," Harry countered. "Or, um… maybe that's not the right way to say it."

"Please, do find the right way to say what you want to say," Dumbledore invited.

"Okay, Professor," Harry said, frowning as he tried to put his thoughts together into words. "So… well, obviously Lockhart was a terrible person, but he _did_ teach me the Homorphus spell. So that's better than nothing."

"A fine point, Harry, a fine point," Dumbledore nodded. "And that must be a very obscure spell indeed. I am glad you have learned it, and I may ask for your help in teaching it to me some time."

"That's something I don't really understand, though," Remus said. "We know from Michael – and from what Lockhart said – that he didn't really _do_ most of these things. We can't be sure about all of them, yet, but we know he _didn't_ cast the Homorphus Charm on Michael. But he _did_ manage to teach Harry."

"Ah, yes," Dumbledore said, sounding sad. "I believe that what was going on is this. We now know that Gilderoy took the details for his books from the real deeds of heroic – and sadly largely forgotten – witches and wizards, such as Ardit Dibra from Albania. But I fear that – before he wiped away their memories of their brave actions, he first took a copy of the memories themselves, so that he might make his books more accurate."

"That's… really awful," Sirius muttered, which was something Harry agreed with. In fact, he probably would have said it himself if Sirius hadn't been first. "But… doesn't that mean he should have actually been good? Maybe nobody would ever have found him out if he was, but from what Harry's told me he's just been having the students do nonsense all year."

"That is a fine question," Dumbledore said, nodding. "I believe he would have been as good as you suggest if he had actually made any sort of effort to practice the skills involved, or to think about the memories in more than the most trivial way. That is why he was able to teach you that spell, Harry, and why – when I conducted the interview for him – I could not tell that he had not actually done any of those things."

He sighed. "I had hoped that, after the main lesson from Professor Quirrell last year was that one should be afraid of the Dark Powers, the main lesson from Professor Lockhart this year would be that one should _not_ be afraid of them. Gilderoy had a real confidence to him, though it seems now that that confidence was from the fact that the worst problem he has had to face in his life up until this point was most likely a book tour."

Harry giggled at that, and he heard chuckles from the adult wizards.

"It seems I will need to get another temporary teacher for the remaining weeks of the school year," Dumbledore added, now more-or-less thinking out loud. "And perhaps I should invite Fawkes to my future interviews, as well; it might provide a very useful check against people who are simply not as pleasant as one remembers from school."

He looked over his glasses at Harry, then at Sirius. "If there is one lesson we can draw from this, it is that really quite dreadful people can come from any of the Houses of Hogwarts."

"I've more than learned _that_ lesson," Sirius said, mostly to himself.

"Has there ever been anyone nasty from Hufflepuff?" Harry asked, curious. "I can't think of any."

"There almost certainly was," Dumbledore replied, raising a hand to his chin. "And if I think of any you will be the first to know."

* * *

After that, Dumbledore wanted to get some more details on exactly _what_ had happened, starting with how Remus had found the Wagga Wagga Wizard and why, and then moving on to the details of how they'd all shown up at Lockhart's door and the battle that resulted.

It sounded like Michael might be going to get in a bit of trouble for punching someone, but Dumbledore said that it sounded like there wouldn't be _much_ trouble and he'd probably just be told not to do it again. Dumbledore also seemed very impressed with the wandless wind spell he'd cast from the window, which Harry had to admit he'd been confused by, and congratulated Remus for some excellent Disarming work and Harry for using a non-dangerous fire spell instead of a dangerous one.

Neville also got fifteen points, which was nice. Harry hadn't known you could give or take away points without the person actually being there.

"So there's one question I still have," Sirius said, once that was over, then paused. "No, wait. I have lots of questions. One of the questions I still have is how Lockhart thought he could get away with it."

"I rather imagine he thought he was the cleverest person around," Dumbledore said. "Though unfortunately quite a lot of people had to buy quite a lot of his books; I shall have to see if we can provide the Defence textbooks next year for free, or provide some sort of refund."

"I've known a lot of people who thought they were the smartest person around," Michael said. "They can't all have been right."

"A fine point," Dumbledore replied, smiling brightly. "And you had other questions, Sirius?"

"Well… firstly, why is Harry always involved in this kind of thing?" Sirius asked.

"Perhaps he simply has bad luck," Dumbledore suggested. "Or perhaps it is just how it is with dragons."

"I think it has mostly been luck," Harry agreed, thinking about it. "But I _have_ helped, so maybe it's not always _bad_ luck?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "An excellent question, Harry, and I think it depends on who you ask as to whether your involvement is bad luck or not. Gilderoy, for example, probably considers it very bad luck, though I would not trust his opinion on the matter."

* * *

Dumbledore said thank-you to all of them for helping, told them that he'd be getting hold of a temporary teacher for the rest of the year, and then sighed about how few choices there were for who to have do Defence Against the Dark Arts for the 1993-4 school year.

Sirius nudged Remus, who looked surprised, and then one thing led to another and Remus got a job offer. He said he was worried about his lycanthropism causing problems, but Dumbledore replied by pointing out that at the very least Harry would always be around to ensure that Remus' transformations into being a wolf were quickly and safely reversed.

That led to a discussion about the Homorphus spell itself, and how it was only a cure for _that_ transformation (which was a pity) but that that was still much better than the alternative. It sounded like the only thing left to work out was whether Harry was safe from Remus if he _hadn't_ taken Wolfsbane, though hopefully that was something they wouldn't need to test in the first place since Professor Snape was quite capable of brewing Wolfsbane.

Once that had all been explained, Remus sounded quite interested in the job, though he did say it was only if Dumbledore didn't have any other good choices.

* * *

The next morning, Neville opened his copy of the Daily Prophet at breakfast.

"Cripes," he said, and Harry leaned over to have a look.

The headline said 'Gilderoy Blackhart?' and showed a quite good picture of Lockhart doing his best to look rakish in chains.

"Oh, they've got an interview with Michael," Harry observed. "That's quite brave of him."

He tilted his head a little. "I wonder if you can undo a memory charm?"

"Yeah, you can," Neville told him. "It's kind of tricky, though, usually you need the same person who cast it to undo it. You _can_ get by with just the same wand, apparently, if you're really good, so maybe they can reverse his ones."

Harry nodded, absorbing that information.

It was a lot like the way that curses and stuff worked in books… or, in fact, how the actual Fidelius Charm worked, because that was about a trade-off as well.

Maybe that would come up in Arithmancy. It sounded like an Arithmancy sort of thing, though Harry wasn't an expert on Arithmancy because he hadn't done Arithmancy yet.

Shaking his head before he got a bit confused about that, Harry selected a thick slice of toast. He spread butter over it, waited for the butter to soak in, and then took a slightly spongy and slightly crunchy bite.

On the other side of the table, Ron did something slightly different by adding butter to a crumpet and then setting it on fire. It was bluebell flames, though, so it just melted the butter more thoroughly.

"Wonder who we're going to have teaching Defence for the rest of the year," he said, before snuffing out his breakfast.

"I hope it's someone who looks at least as good," one of the Sixth-Year girls said.

"I'll be happy just so long as they actually know how to cast spells," Percy volunteered. "We've only got a few weeks before exams."

"Isn't it a couple of months at least?" Ron asked, swallowing some of his crumpet. "And they're Sixth Year exams for you. It's the least significant exams of your last three years at Hogwarts."

"That doesn't make them unimportant, Ron," Percy replied. "Why not ask Hermione for her opinion?"

"I agree with Ron," Hermione said, taking a sausage and slicing it up into round circles. "He said three things and they're all factually correct."

"Blimey, that was unexpected," Ron blinked. "Maybe I should go to Madam Pomfrey."

Harry sniggered.

Finished with the cutting, Hermione arranged the sausage pieces neatly on a slice of bread before putting a second slice on top of them. "I don't want to imagine what the exam questions would have looked like if Professor Lockhart had set them."

"I do," Ginny piped up. "How many scars did I get fighting the Yekaterinburg Yeti? No marks."

Even Percy had to laugh at that one.

* * *

Somewhat to his surprise, Harry got some letters over the next few days.

There were a few which were saying well done to him for helping to stop Lockhart from escaping, a few which were telling him off for being involved in stopping Lockhart from escaping, and one rather odd one from Australia which told him he was a 'beaut'.

He wasn't sure what that meant, and nobody else seemed to have much idea either. Penelope thought that it was probably like "beauty", which meant it had to be good, but Harry had never met the person.

It could be based off the drawings Dean had done, though.

* * *

Two days before the end of the holiday, Fred and George returned to Hogwarts. They arrived by Floo instead of taking the Hogwarts Express, which wasn't due back until the next day, and somewhat to Harry's surprise Charlie Weasley came with them.

"Hermione wrote to me," he explained to Harry, as they headed down to Hagrid's hut. "And since I needed to bring my brothers back to Britain anyway, I thought I'd come all the way with them."

"Oh, sure, let him know what happened," George grumbled. "Don't let it be a surprise."

"At least you didn't tell him where you had to bring us back from," Fred said.

"Stop tempting fate, Fred, you're too good at it," George said.

"But you're Fred," Fred countered.

"I'm Fred?" George asked. "So I am."

Harry was starting to wonder if he'd guessed wrong about which was which. It was sort of impossible with the Twins, you never knew if they'd been telling the truth _this_ time or the _last_ time.

"Lake Victoria," Charlie explained.

"Oh, so you did the Animagus thing as well?" Harry asked.

"Of course we did," Probably Fred said. "Why wouldn't you?"

"Getting to Kenya was the trickiest bit," Maybe George agreed. "Sort of why we got Charlie involved, really."

"But we're not going to show you yet," Probably Fred told him. "We need to build up the suspense."

"And work out what we're going to call ourselves," Maybe George nodded. "It's no good Percy being the only one with a Marauder codename."

"I wondered about Smaug," Harry admitted. "Or Puff. But neither of them really sounds right."

"Puff the magic dragon," Maybe George said to himself. "It's got a nice vibe."

* * *

After deciding that they didn't know where Honah-Lee was (or indeed how to spell it) and that Harry's home in Surrey only really qualified him to live "by the sea" if that applied to everyone in the country, they reached Hagrid's hut.

"Charlie, good to see you," Hagrid nodded, spotting them. "Fred. George. Harry. Come in, come in. What brings yeh here?"

"It's because of Nora," Charlie explained, and the dragon in question poked her head over the side of the hut.

"_That's me!"_ Nora announced. _"Hello!"_

"She says hello," Harry relayed.

Charlie smiled, waving at her, then glanced at Harry. "She understands waving and smiling, right? I know some animals see teeth and they think it's a threat."

Nora answered one of those questions by waving back, then jumped over Hagrid's house with a single bound (and a powerful wing-flap that sent loose bits of straw everywhere) and landed with a thump next to them.

She gave Charlie a curious sniff, glanced at Hagrid for a moment, then licked Charlie from his knees to his neck.

"Well, that's certainly not _normal_ dragon behaviour," Charlie observed, chuckling and trying to brush off dragon drool. "It's almost a pity Harry's older by more than a decade _and_ grew up in Surrey, or I'd think it was something about Hogwarts that just made dragons… odd."

"And I started off human," Harry reminded Charlie, because it was something _he_ found easy to forget so it was probably something other people sometimes couldn't remember either.

"And that," Charlie agreed. "Okay, um… Hagrid, I'd like to do some tests, if that's okay?"

"What sort of tests?" Hagrid asked, absently picking up a log about four inches in diameter and hurling it into the middle distance. Nora launched herself after it, wings pumping, and they watched as the log bounced on the grass and rolled.

Nora tried to catch it as it bounced, missed, and went wingtip-over-legs in a tumbling, skidding crash before somehow sliding to a halt in front of the rolling log. Snagging it in her jaws, she took off again – totally unharmed by the crash – and flew back to land in front of Hagrid before dropping it at his feet.

"Nothing dangerous," Charlie clarified. "I mostly want to make _sure_ that she's speaking and understanding things, rather than just reading cues like some normal animals do."

Harry was about to protest that he could just tell Charlie that Nora was speaking, because she was even if the language she was speaking happened to not be English, and Hagrid was by now starting to get good at simple phrases in Dragonese, but then he thought about it for a bit.

"Is that because of how other dragons don't seem to?" he asked. "So we need to make sure that it's not just because she's trained or something?"

"That's right," Charlie confirmed. "I read a Muggle book about it, and there was a horse called Clever Hans who _seemed_ to be able to do maths. But his trainer was just kind of… accidentally giving him hints, and he couldn't do maths if the person asking the question didn't know the answer."

"That sounds like the sort of prank a horse animagus could do," Fred said. "Why didn't you become a horse?"

"Me?" George countered. "Why didn't _you_ become a horse?"

"Because I didn't think of it," Fred told him. "What's your excuse?"

"Since you've said it, I'm going to choose to say that that was my reason from the beginning."

"So the idea is," Charlie said, ignoring his brothers. "We work out something where the only way it works is if Nora is actually able to work things out and carry messages."

Hagrid threw a piece of coal, this time, and Nora flew up to blow it up with a little blast of fire breath. That earned her a scratch over one eye ridge, which she clearly enjoyed quite a lot.

* * *

Charlie's tests turned out to be kind of hard to do, because it was a lot harder than expected to design something where _no_ cheating could happen – especially when only two people really understood the language that Nora could speak, when one of them was still learning a lot of words and grammar rules (Harry found it hard to explain Dragonese grammar rules, because he just heard Dragonese like it was English) and when Nora herself, while eager to help, was also quite easy to distract.

Fred and George persisted in not helping by using logs to bat lumps of coal for her.

"Okay, let's try this," Charlie said, eventually, and waved his hand to make coloured symbols appear in the air. A blue ring, a yellow cross, and a red star. "Harry, can you tell her what each of these is?"

"Sure," Harry agreed. "Nora?"

Nora stopped paying attention to the flying pieces of coal, and Harry told her the words for each of them. Then Charlie made another two, this time a red ring and a blue star, and Harry told her what those were as well.

Twirling his wand, Charlie then raised up a wall between himself and Harry. Nora could still see both sides, because of where the wall was, but Harry couldn't see through the gap.

"Okay," the Dragon Tamer said, after a few more seconds. "Ask Nora what she can see."

"What can you see, Nora?" Harry asked dutifully.

Nora's head tilted a bit, then she brightened.

"Star!" she said.

Turning so he was looking at Charlie instead, Harry relayed what she'd said.

Charlie vanished the wall, and Harry saw that there was indeed a star floating there – a _yellow_ star, this time.

"That's pretty good," Harry realized. "So I don't know what it is, so the only way that I could know is if it's Nora not just telling me but recognizing what it is in the first place."

"That's right," Charlie agreed.

* * *

Two more tries confirmed it, and Harry watched as Charlie wrote up all his notes – and as Fred and George got some Filibuster Fireworks from wherever they'd been hiding them before launching them up so that Nora could chase and catch them. She didn't always reach them, and sometimes when she did there was a big explosion and she coughed a lot afterwards, but she seemed to enjoy it.

"If all of this made _sense_, it would mean that Hogwarts was a really important place for research on fantastic beasts," Charlie mused. "But almost _none_ of it makes sense. I know you're a special case, Harry, but it seems like Nora is a special case as well – most dragons may not be _that_ violent, but female Norwegian Ridgebacks are some of the most dangerous ones that aren't actual nesting mothers. But not only is Nora more playful than anything else, she's _really_ smart for a dragon. And then there's the whole… speaking… thing."

He threw up his hands. "I wish you'd found that the dragons on the Hebrides Reserve were just reticent, I really do… but none of them seemed to understand _the language that only dragons seem to understand."_

Harry had to admit that it was quite a puzzle.

"Maybe it's something about Hogwarts?" he suggested. "Or Hagrid?"

"It _could_ be," Charlie admitted. "The only way to test that is to get him another dragon to raise, though."

He chuckled. "I wonder how Nora would take having a baby brother?"

"I'm not sure whether she considers _me_ one," Harry said. "I'm definitely older, and she knows that, but I'm a lot smaller as well..."

* * *

The next evening, not long before Curfew (which still happened even in between terms, though Harry wasn't sure why), Fred and George invited the rest of their group into the same classroom Percy had used.

"Okay, so we weren't going to show you these until we'd worked out names," Fred began.

"But that meant there was a problem," George went on. "Tell him, Fred."

"We realized that we're not actually very good with nicknames," Fred completed. "Especially not ours."

"You did spend four years calling Ron Ronniekins," Ginny said, nodding. "Which isn't very impressive."

"Lies and slander!" George protested, as Ron grumbled. "That implies we stopped."

"So, it's not long before curfew, and there's a prefect not far away," Dean said, nodding at Percy (who was, after all, leaning on the disused teacher's desk). "What actually _are_ the two of you?"

"We should probably get on with it, George," Fred said. "That is the whole point of this meeting."

George (or, at least, the one who Harry had more-or-less randomly guessed was George) put his hands on the nearest table, then pushed down – and transformed in a blur of fur and movement, leapfrogging up onto the table as he shrank into a sort of long, tube-shaped animal that Harry couldn't really identify offhand.

It wasn't that he couldn't think of what it was, but that he could think of too many things. George might have turned into a ferret, or a stoat, or a weasel, or a mink, or a marten, or any of those other sorts of things that all looked nearly the same.

Maybe if he got a wildlife book in Fort William he'd be able to work it out? He'd have to ignore the streak of red fur, though...

Then Fred made the whole thing more complicated by doing much the same thing, and turning into a slightly larger but otherwise very similar animal.

"Oh, great," Ron groaned. "You've turned into weasels."

"I'm not sure they _are_ weasels," Hermione frowned. "They look a bit bigger than that. And… it looks like only one of you has any white fur."

There was another blur, and George got down off the table.

"You're sure neither of us is a weasel?" he asked, sounding a bit disappointed.

"Well, I'd have to check to be certain," Hermione admitted. "Why?"

"Oh, we had this whole joke worked out," George explained. "A weasel is weaselley recognized while a stoat is stoatally different."

"I'm sure I've heard that one before," Dean frowned. "Probably in a Christmas cracker."

"That might be where _they_ got it from," Percy observed. "Though I am very impressed with the two of you. I've always suspected you weren't doing as well as you could in school, and this at least shows that you're quite able to do Potions to a very high standard."

Fred reverted to human as well at that. "I think we might have outsmarted ourselves, George," he said.

"Probably," George agreed. "Must be because we're so smart we even outsmart ourselves."

Percy shook his head.

"So… which one of you is Fred and which one is George?" Harry asked. "You look slightly different in Animagus form, so that would at least let us tell you apart then."

"And you could do it with smell in both forms," Neville suggested.

"Well, that's simple," said Fred. "I'm Fred, and this is George."

"My brother's correct," George nodded. "I'm Fred, and this is George."

Harry tried not to giggle.

"What?" Fred asked. "We both said the same thing. I don't see what's confusing about it."

* * *

Animal forms and so on notwithstanding, it was the start of the term leading up to exams and so from the next morning there was a lot of work to do.

Potions was all about brewing things with dangerous ingredients _without_ being reminded of the safety precautions, with Professor Snape telling them that it was to make sure they either remembered what the dangerous thing was, or looked it up, or it would go wrong and they'd have a good reason to remember _next_ time.

In Charms they were starting every lesson off with a random Charm test, to make sure they could perform whichever spell they were asked in the exam without needing to spend half an hour revising it first. Professor Flitwick told them all with a smile that while of course you _could_ look up what the spell was to clean the floor if you wanted to clean the floor, wouldn't it all be so much quicker if you just remembered the spell in the first place?

History of Magic didn't really change, though. History of Magic never really changed, except for what the subject of that lesson was.

* * *

The biggest change was in Defence.

Harry and his friends arrived a few minutes before the bell, claiming a couple of the desks fairly near the front, and Harry put down the pile of books he was carrying before sorting them into a kind of wall.

"Why do you have so many books?" Neville asked. "I just guessed we'd probably need the spellbook."

"I thought it'd be best to bring all the books we might be using," Harry explained, putting the Lockhart books as crenelations. "It's kind of a guess, but I only need to do it once."

Just as the bell began to ring, the door at the back of the classroom opened and a pleasant-looking witch who looked a bit younger than Sirius came in.

"How you all doing?" she asked, with a sort of twang to her voice that Harry thought was probably some flavour of American. "It's mighty nice to meet you. I'm Sue, or Miss Nym if you're feelin' formal."

She turned and began chalking something on the board. "Now, Dumbledore's told me that you all have had a bit of a problem with a teacher who wasn't teaching. That sound right?"

There was plenty of grumbling, mostly from the Ravenclaws, though Hermione grumbled with the best of them.

"Well, that means I've got to teach you all a year's worth of Defence in about a month or two," Miss Nym went on. "Let's get started with the Disarming Charm, anyone know that one already?"

* * *

Harry wasn't sure Miss Nym was very good at teaching, in the abstract sort of way, but she definitely knew her stuff and after months of re-enacting bits of Lockhart's books or writing poems or making collages _everybody_ was eager to do practical work – and to listen to her slightly disjointed explanations about what different spells could and could not do, or why one of the most important things for a Defence specialist was to be good at dodging.

There wasn't a textbook she set any work from, but Harry didn't even mind that very much – it meant he had to take a lot of notes, maybe, but when Hermione asked Miss Nym shrugged and said that anyone who was interested in the class would pay attention anyway and frankly finding a good textbook might take half the time they had left in the year.

* * *

Defence Against the Dark Arts might have been the big change, but all the rest of their lessons were speeding towards the exams as well as April turned into May.

As usual, Astronomy lessons were a bit odd in how they were structured. Lessons always happened around midnight, but as they got closer and closer to June – and to the exams – the middle of the night got less… _nightlike_ than it was earlier in the year.

With how far north Hogwarts was, that meant that by about the end of April the sky was never _entirely_ dark. Harry knew that by the end of May it would be bright enough to steer a boat around for the whole of the night, so it would be impossible to really do astronomy at all.

Harry did wonder whether OWLs had something to get around that, though. They usually did theory work in the summer, and labelling star charts and things, but it seemed like an OWL in Astronomy should require some actual _astronomy_.

Then there was Herbology, where the crop of Mandrakes had long since been handed off to the older students as they got pickier and harder to handle. The changing seasons influenced that subject as well, despite the way the greenhouses were heated, because some plants only grew well with long hours of sunlight.

Harry was sort of staying on top of things – partly because Oliver Wood had been told in no uncertain terms that the Quidditch finals had been scheduled _after_ the exams for a reason – and it felt like one week slipped into the next in a kind of cozy blur of lesson, homework, scheduled revision and then well-earned time to read or fly or teach Dragonish or just spend time with friends.

They'd all been quite surprised when a test had showed that it actually gave them more time (and enjoyment) to just do the work quickly rather than drag it out over most of the evening. Though after they _had_ shown that, Harry sort of thought it was obvious in hindsight.

* * *

During the last week of May, Harry was in the library with what was probably about a third of Second Year.

"...okay, so what do _your_ notes say is the recipe for the Hair Raising Potion?" Ernie Macmillan asked. "I got it off the board, but the textbook is different."

"I'm pretty sure the textbook is supposed to be one of those things you only trust if it agrees with Professor Snape," Daphne contributed. "Otherwise it's just something that's been left in because of an editing mistake."

"Why don't you just say that you should trust Professor Snape?" Terry asked, and Ron scoffed.

"What, you think a Slytherin would say to trust another Slytherin?" he asked. "Of course not."

"Hey, some Slytherins can be trusted," Dean said. "I assume. Probably."

"Dean Thomas, you take that back!" Tracy demanded, pointing at him. "Trustworthy? What do you take us for?"

"Hufflepuffs?" Neville suggested.

"Hey, don't bring us into this," Susan Bones said, shaking her head. "Anyway. That potion?"

"It's four rat tails," Hermione informed them. "The textbook says three, but I tested both options and the version on the board is right. The textbook version only works if you have long hair."

"What about if you have no hair at all?" Ernie asked, interested. "Can Harry try some?"

Harry was about to reply, mostly about he _was_ hairy all over, but there was a cough from behind him.

"Excuse me," said Tanisis, the Ravenclaw sphinx. "I was wondering if you could help a friend and I with a problem?"

"Sure," Harry agreed. "Sorry, guys."

* * *

As it turned out, Tanisis led Harry through to a part of the library with several people in it – Anna and Taira were both there, as well as Ginny, and someone Harry vaguely remembered was one of Ginny's friends from her home village. (Luna, he thought her name was.)

The friend who Tanisis actually _wanted_ to speak to Harry about, though, was June.

"We're a bit worried about the exams," June explained, sitting on her haunches with a book open in front of her. "I'm a bit slower writing than the humans, and I've been practicing, but sometimes I need to use a dictation quill to finish an essay on time."

"It's pretty much the same for me," Tanisis agreed. "And we thought about it, and realized that you're the only person any of us know who would have had to deal with not being a human in exams."

Harry frowned, thinking about it.

It was actually quite a tricky question.

Obviously it wouldn't be fair in an essay question to make Tanisis or June write with a normal quill, because it would take them longer to write the same amount of words even if they could think of the words just as fast as anyone else. But would it be fair in an exam which was mostly about knowing the right answer?

_Was_ it as easy for Harry to write as the humans? He'd never thought about it before.

"I… don't think I know if there's an answer to that," he admitted. "But there probably should be."

* * *

The first thing Harry was able to tell them was just what kind of exams there were. The practical ones sounded okay to both the other quadrupeds, and so did things like the Astronomy exam where they had to answer questions. But there were essay exams as well, and the special anti-cheating quills they were given for the exams meant that – even if they could speak out loud during exams without _that_ being cheating – neither Tanisis nor June could rely on dictation quills, or even just quills that made handwriting neater.

Anna hesitantly asked if Harry knew who she and her brother were, and Harry had guessed that she meant about their being kitsune and said yes, and Anna told them that sometimes they let 'their pet fox' do their homework for them but it was a lot slower. (Sometimes they also used 'their pet fox' as an excuse for unfinished homework by hastily chewing it up, but that wasn't really going to work in an exam.)

Harry wondered aloud whether they could do something like what he did with his wand, and attach it to their tails, but a bit of looking at Tanisis' tufted leonine tail revealed that that wouldn't work. It was only slightly prehensile and it wasn't long enough for her to bring it up to a writing position while sitting down, so it would be very awkward, and even that would be better than June trying it because she just had a wolf tail.

That did give Luna an idea, though, and she asked Tanisis whether she could try tying the quill to one of her claws instead.

It was a bit fiddly – Harry had to help – but eventually they had two of Luna's spare quills tied to the closest thing either Tanisis or June had to index fingers. It worked, a bit, but Tanisis still looked nervous so Harry said that the best thing to do would probably be to talk to Professor Dumbledore.

He did wonder whether they had any other problems they hadn't mentioned yet, though, and told all four of the non-human students that if they had any trouble with that sort of thing they should let someone know. (Preferably either him or Professor McGonagall, since as a part-time cat the Transfiguration teacher should be able to empathize.)

* * *

AN:

If this was the late 1990s and early 2000s, they'd be legally entitled to extra time. I'm not sure of the legal situation in 1993 though.

The DADA teacher thing is becoming a bit of a trend...


	32. Testing Times For Dragons

A few days before the exams were to start, Professor McGonagall came around at breakfast with a pile of schedule sheets for them.

Harry took his when she gave it to him, then frowned and raised his paw. "Professor?"

The Transfiguration teacher looked around the hall, which was still fairly empty – Harry continued to be among the first to get up every morning – then nodded to him. "Yes, Mr. Potter?"

"I was wondering – do you hand out these to everyone in all four houses?" he asked. "And the same for the timetables? Because it seems like that's a lot of work."

"I think you will find that the Heads of House hand out the timetables for their own houses," Professor McGonagall told him.

"Huh," Harry mused. "I wonder why I've never noticed anyone who isn't you doing it..."

"That would be because when Professor Flitwick is handing out timetables, he's not handing out any to _you_, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said, and Harry had to admit that that really was an excellent point.

The exams were spread over most of two weeks, with at least one theory exam for each subject and practical exams for Charms, Potions, Transfiguration, Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts. Defence was a new one, and Harry wondered what it would be like… as well as what it would have been like to do the practical exam for Defence if Lockhart was still the teacher. (Instead of, as he was now, sentenced to five years in Azkaban.)

Did the teachers set the exams? Harry wasn't sure about the theory ones, but then again the one he was wondering about was the practical anyway.

There probably wouldn't be anything on the theory exam about Lockhart's favourite colour, which was sort of a pity because they certainly all knew that by now.

Finishing some of what was labelled as leftover lasagne – Harry couldn't remember having lasagne last night, but then again maybe the Elves had just decided to make it and then serve it all as leftovers – Harry looked around to see who else he knew was here. The only first-year he knew was Colin, who was just as bright-eyed as ever, and who seemed to be having an argument with Lord Ridley.

* * *

"… don't really think that would work," Colin was saying.

"Why not?" Lord Ridley demanded. "Do you doubt the word of an expert dragon slayer?"

"Well, yeah," Colin replied. "Because I'm pretty sure that if most dragons were like that then they wouldn't need slaying."

He waved a book around. "And the dragons in this book are really nice, nicer than the people. And I don't think they've slayed anyone."

"The word is _slain_," Lord Ridley insisted. "And I stopped four wyrms from ravaging the countryside!"

"But Nora _doesn't_ ravage the countryside," Colin said. "She doesn't even harry sheep. But then again Harry doesn't harry sheep either."

"I think you mean worrying sheep?" Harry asked, interjecting and making Lord Ridley jump about six inches in the air. "I can't help harrying things, because that's my name in the first place so you could say that anything I do counts as harrying."

"Harry!" Colin said. "And – oh – that's right, worrying is the word. But I don't think there _are_ any sheep in this book."

Harry checked what the book was, and recognized it as one he'd read himself. "I think there are some sheep, they're just called herdbeasts."

He looked at Lord Ridley, who hadn't come down yet. "Do you mind if I sit here? I want to ask Colin about his exam schedule."

Colin shuffled up a spot to let Harry sit down, tugging his schedule out of his bag. "Here you go. Why do you want to know, Harry?"

"It's because of some of the other First Years," Harry explained. "If you have two essay papers in the same day it might be a problem because June and Tanisis find it hard to write fast."

"Oh, right!" Colin realized. "Yeah, they're really cool. Tanisis helped me with my History once."

He shrugged. "She did ask me when a door wasn't a door, but I worked out what the answer was."

Harry smiled, noticing that it looked like there was a History of Magic exam in the afternoon after a Charms theory paper in the morning, and decided to wait around to make sure both quadruped girls had seen it.

It was only polite, after all.

* * *

"...okay, so what do you think the best way to do this is?" Dean asked, once they were all through with their breakfast and looking at the Second-Year exam schedule. "Should we really focus on the subjects we have on the next day?"

"Well, we sort of know all the subjects _pretty_ well by now," Ron said. "Practicing all the spells we've learned in a row is really going to help out with the practicals, and so is looking at how to do all the Potions – hey, we can write things down on note parchment, right?" he checked.

"We could last time," Harry agreed. "I think we should be able to this time."

"Right," Ron nodded. "So that means the first thing we should do once we sit down is look at the questions and write down anything that's absolutely _needed_ for them on scrap parchment. Then, so long as we remember it going into the exam, we won't have that awful thing when you forget it..."

"Potter," Draco said, walking over with his friends Vincent and Gregory.

"Oh, good morning, Draco," Harry smiled. "Looking forward to the exams?"

"Blimey, bit keen," Ron muttered.

"You should enjoy them, it's the last time you'll be at Hogwarts," Draco said, with what Harry judged was probably a sneer. "My Father is going to be investigating the school with the rest of the board of governors, and you and the other _animals_ will be expelled like you belong."

"Watch your mouth!" Dean said hotly.

There was a scuffling sound, which sounded a lot like Neville had done his best to stop Ron from hexing somebody.

Harry thought about that for a bit, including about how Draco was a Slytherin, then smiled. "Thank you, Draco!"

That made everyone just sort of look at Harry, surprised, and Harry did his best to explain.

"Well, I know Draco's a Slytherin," he began. "So I thought about why he'd say something like that. If he wanted me to be expelled, then he wouldn't give me any warning."

Draco seemed to be turning a funny colour, which was a bit odd, and Harry decided to keep explaining. "But obviously he can't just warn me that Mr. Malfoy is coming to try and get me expelled, because then he'd be doing something Mr. Malfoy doesn't want, and that's not how Slytherins do things. But if he _gloated_ at me, and he just happened to say when Mr. Malfoy is going to show up, then he's warned me without having to _actually_ warn me. It's very Slytherin."

He held out his paw for Draco to shake.

Draco stared at it, then at Harry's muzzle, and turned an even more peculiar colour.

"But I'm not-" he began. "I wasn't- but- um-"

After several seconds, he just turned and went back to the Slytherin table.

"That was _brilliant,"_ Neville said.

"Well, I did have to thank him," Harry said. "He's actually quite nice if you think about what he's saying."

* * *

The exams were on them within the next few days, and they started off with the Transfiguration theory paper.

Like most of them, it was a two hour exam, and Harry flipped through to check how many questions there were and how much each of them was worth before going back to the start.

In primary school, they'd been told how the best thing to do was to get the quick questions – the ones which gave a lot of marks compared to how long they would take to do – out of the way first, and only then really move on to the harder ones. That way at least they'd get the marks for the easy ones, and Harry supposed it would make someone doing an exam more confident as well.

That wasn't really possible with how Wizarding exams were laid out, because you had to answer the questions on separate pieces of parchment and they all had to be in order, but Harry decided to make some notes on what he thought the answers were to the questions that looked easiest – just to save time.

Then it was on to the first question, which was about Switching Spells. It reminded you what a Switching Spell was, which was nice, and you had to explain the downsides and upsides of them.

One of the obvious upsides was that a Switching Spell let you do some quite complicated things without having to look up a specific spell for it, so Harry started writing that down – saying as an example that if you wanted to give someone bat ears, a Switching Spell was a lot easier to do properly than a human transfiguration.

Then there was another upside, which was that they were easy to reverse as well – you could just switch things back again.

Harry took a bit longer to think of a downside, then decided that one of the important ones was that you had to have what you wanted already around to start with, and that once you cast the spell you sort of lost it. So if you wanted to give someone bat ears, the problem was that the bat would then end up with _human _ears – and you needed a bat to start with.

After about ten or fifteen minutes, he checked the time and realized that he should move on to the next question.

Keeping track of time in exams was tricky. Maybe he _should_ get a watch like he'd been thinking about…

* * *

Harry quickly checked up on the First-Years after the first exam, to make sure that their new way of writing was going better, then headed up to do last-minute revision for the Charms practical.

None of them knew what the Charms spells in the practical would be, so in practice that meant they just sat around and called out spell names. When one of them sounded like a Charm that they might be doing in the exam everyone gave it a go.

"Are Muggle practicals like this?" Ron asked.

"You're asking the wrong people," Dean shrugged. "None of us _did_ any practical exams in primary school, because primary school is mostly about learning times tables and how to read and stuff."

"And about sports, too," Harry volunteered. "We had sports day at my school."

"How did you do?" Dean asked. "I bet you did pretty well at the sprints."

"Not really, I didn't get picked for that one," Harry shrugged. "They got me to do the sack race, which was kind of a pain because I couldn't manage it with my wings."

Dean and Hermione thought about that.

"I can see how that would be a problem," Hermione admitted. "Unless you flew to the end."

"It didn't seem fair to fly, I thought it was one of the rules," Harry answered. "You know, like how with an egg and spoon race you're supposed to _not_ hold the egg down with your hand."

"I've never really heard of that kind of race," Ron said. "Either of them. How do they work?"

"You never heard of these?" Dean asked. "What about the one where you have to carry a wet sponge and squeeze it into the bucket?"

Ron shook his head.

"Did you not have school sports days?" Dean pressed.

"We didn't have _school_, not really," Ron replied. "Mum taught us at home."

Hermione thought about that.

"She did a really good job," she decided. "Managing to teach all of you, I mean."

"I sort of wonder if she did best with Percy, sometimes," Ron admitted. "He was third, so she'd had practice, and he wasn't Fred or George so he was manageable."

"I think you've done well," Harry told him.

"Can we practice the Hover Charm?" Neville suggested, as Ron went kind of pink. "Sorry to interrupt, I keep getting that wrong."

"Oh, of course," Hermione said. "Let's see how you've been casting it."

Neville twirled his wand, and said _'Volito'. _The book he was pointing at trembled slightly, then rolled sideways and fell over.

"I think you're not getting the wand movement quite right," Hermione judged. "You need to make sure the second loop is _inside_ the first loop, not outside, otherwise it might mix up the up-ness with some down-ness."

"Is that the technical term?" Harry asked.

"No, but only since the 17th century," Hermione told him.

"_Volito_," Neville tried, and the book wobbled into the air before dropping back.

"Wait, hold on, are you serious about that?" Ron asked, frowning.

"Let's give it one more try," Hermione suggested, and Harry watched as Neville cast his Hover Charm. It did seem like the sort of thing they might do in the practical, so Harry decided to practice it himself as well and made his bag hover.

"It's almost time for the exam," Dean said, checking his watch. "We'd better head down there. I know Ron and I are right near the end of the alphabet, but sometimes they do it in reverse so Ron could end up being just after Blaise."

"Hermione?" Ron said plaintively. "Was upness _really_ once a technical term?"

* * *

After the Charms practical, which went fairly well – Neville said he had to try about three or four times but he got the spell working in the end – and another theory paper, the Defence practical came along the next afternoon.

"Okay," Miss Nym said, as they all filed into a classroom. "All of you all ready for this?"

Harry was one of the many who sort of mumbled that, yeah, probably, but they didn't know what was actually going to happen.

"Great!" the Defence teacher said brightly. "So I thought you all deserved a bit of fun for your practical exam! I'll be calling two of you in to start, then the rest one at a time, and each of you will be doing some duelling!"

"Duelling?" Draco repeated, sounding interested. "At last, something worthwhile."

"I don't know if it sounds worthwhile," Neville said. "It sounds like you'd beat us really easily, because you're a grown-up."

"Don't worry, I didn't mean duelling me," Miss Nym reassured him. "I mean duelling each other."

"How's that fair?" Justin asked. "Duels don't normally have two winners, do they?"

"Which is why it wouldn't be fair if I said you all had to win to pass," Miss Nym answered. "Just do your best. Any other questions?"

Hermione put her hand up. "What about if someone who's good enough to pass gets put against someone who's much, much better? Wouldn't it look unfair?"

"Hermione, that's how everyone else feels in _every other class,"_ Parvati commented.

"Hey!" Lily Moon complained.

"Except for some Ravenclaws," Parvati amended her statement.

"Why not all Ravenclaws?" Harry asked, curious.

"I'm terribly nervous," Terry Boot told him. "Besides, I can read. Hermione's slightly ridiculous."

"You all done?" Miss Nym asked, waiting a moment to be sure the conversations were over. "Then the first of you come through here…"

She named two of the other students from Harry's year, opening the connecting door into a classroom that had had everything pushed to the side, and as they all went through there was a thumping sound and a muttered curse.

"Are you all right, Miss?" Ernie asked.

"Just stubbed my toe, don't worry," the DADA teacher muttered, and then the door closed.

Harry tilted his head, wondering if he could hear anything, but there must have been some kind of silence spell put up.

Or the wall was just thick. It could be that as well.

* * *

Harry was one of the first to be called in, and as he made his way to the door he twisted his tail around to check on his wand holder.

It seemed to be pretty snug, which was great, and he walked through into the second classroom.

"Hey, Harry," Su Li said, nodding to him. Harry waved back, and Miss Nym told him to stand over to the other side of the classroom.

"Remember, in a formal duel, you both bow to one another," the teacher said. "Seems pretty British to me."

Harry chuckled, and the two of them both bowed.

"Oh, yeah, and don't try anything that might seriously hurt the other duelist," Miss Nym added. "Not that you should know a spell that does that anyway, but I have to say."

Harry nodded his understanding.

"And – begin," Miss Nym said.

Su immediately raised her wand, calling out the incantation for the Body-Bind, and Harry dodged to the side – he wasn't sure if it would lose him marks if he got hit, but it was probably best to treat it like he should avoid being hit anyway.

Three loping strides and he was getting close to the tables that had been pushed to the edge of the room, so he jumped up on top of them and stopped for a moment.

"_Tarantallegra!"_ he called, pointing his wand, but it was harder than he remembered to aim properly with his tail and Su stepped to the side to avoid the jet of light.

"_Rictusempra!"_ the Ravenclaw witch replied, and Harry jumped into the air – wings hammering as the spell hit the wall behind where he'd been – then dropped back to the ground, flying quickly in a circle to try and get around behind her.

Su turned quickly, casting a Jelly-Legs Jinx, and Harry saw it hit one of his wings.

It didn't have any effect, but maybe that would mean he'd lost marks?

Jumping, Harry beat both wings hard, using the force to turn around and go back in the direction he'd come from. Su hadn't seen him do that before, partly because he'd just invented it, and her next spell missed completely.

Harry quickly cast an _Expelliarmus_, and then a _Stupefy_, but the first spell missed and Su cast a shielding spell with _Protego_ before the second reached her. It didn't look like a very _strong_ Shield Charm, to Harry, but it stopped his Stunning Spell before breaking.

Jumping into the air again, Harry inhaled and flew over to the other side of the room. He deliberately tried to make the fire go down the wrong way, and coughed out a big cloud of black smoke, which (he hoped) would hide where he was while he got sorted out again.

"_Rictusempra, Rictusempra, Rictusempra,"_ Su incanted, over and over, shooting jets of light into the smoke cloud, and at least one more of them hit Harry while he worked out what to do next.

Coughing out some more smoke, he did his best to listen to where Su was, then stuck his head out of the smoke so he could actually see for sure.

His tail poked out of the cloud as well, and Su was already moving to the side as Harry called out _"Expelliarmus!"_ \- but he'd swapped his wand from his tail to his right paw, so Su's dodge didn't work and her wand went sailing into the air.

Jumping, Harry caught the wand in mid-air, then let out a relieved huff.

"Well done, both of you!" Miss Nym said with a smile. "Excellent work!"

Harry passed Su back her wand, and looked around the room where they'd been having there duel.

He hadn't realized it while he'd been doing it, but climbing all over the tables on one side of the room had broken some of the wood, and there were a few broken bits in the smoke cloud as well where Su's spells had hit.

"Not to worry, kids," Miss Nym added, flourishing her wand. _"Reparo."_

The damaged bits of the room repaired themselves in a trice, and another spell got rid of the lingering smoke.

* * *

Harry hadn't been quite one hundred percent clear on how this worked, but Miss Nym cleared it up nicely by telling him that Su had done two duels and had "most certainly" done well enough to pass. Harry would be staying around for long enough to have a second duel against one of his classmates, and apparently there was some sort of way of handling it at the ends involving a duel between the first and the last person.

Electing to put his wand back on his tail to start with, Harry looked around to see if there was a good place to start, then decided to just stand somewhere near the middle of the room and see what happened.

The next student to come in was Theodore Nott, one of the Slytherins, and he gave Harry an interested look before pulling his wand from his pocket.

Miss Nym repeated the bit about bowing to one another and not using any spells that could hurt the other person, and Harry bowed (though Theo only _just_ bowed).

"Begin," Miss Nym said, and Theo pointed his wand.

"_Incendio!"_ he called, and Harry brought up his wing to block. The jet of fire magic splashed off the tough surface of his wing, and he frowned for a moment.

"Miss?" he asked. "Does doing this lose points?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out," Miss Nym replied. "Oh, you're not flammable, right?"

"Don't think so," Harry told her.

"_Incendio!"_ Theo incanted again, and this time the spell was aimed for Harry's feet instead. It made a little scorch mark on the floor and set the hem of his robes on fire, and Harry decided he was probably better off on the move instead of blocking.

"_Ictus,"_ he called, firing a Stinging Jinx, and Theo blocked it with his wand.

It was actually really interesting to watch. Harry had heard about spell blocking but never actually seen it before, and it looked like a useful skill to learn. It _seemed_ to involve waving the wand like it was a sword you were using to parry a sword blow, or possibly like it was a lightsaber and you were a Jedi, but there was probably more to it than that.

Maybe it would be better to call it parrying?

"Is that all you've got, Potter?" Theo demanded. _"Flipendo!"_

His Knockback Jinx hit one of the tables pushed against the wall, bouncing it off the wall itself and knocking it forwards with a _bang_, and Harry jumped behind it to use it as a shield.

Switching his wand to his paw to aim better, Harry used a Disarming Charm, but Theo fired a fire-making spell at about the same time and the two jets of magic bounced off one another with a shower of sparks. The fire spell hit a shield that Miss Nym had put up around herself, and the Disarming Charm thumped into one of the other desks.

Harry wondered whether he should do his smokescreen thing again, getting some time to think by casting more Stinging Jinxes – it was a very easy spell – and the third or fourth one actually got past Theo's ability to parry because he messed it up somehow. Theo yelped, then scowled, and set the table Harry was hiding behind on fire.

"That's not proper duelling, Potter!" Theo called. "You can't hide like that!"

Harry was fairly sure that you could… but then he thought about what a formal duel was probably like and how it took place somewhere that wasn't a classroom.

The only times you'd have something to hide behind in an open room would be if you conjured it yourself… so maybe Theo was right about that.

Switching his wand back to his tail, Harry crouched and then took off with a flap of his wings. Theo's next spell (a _Flipendo_ knockback jinx) went wide, missing completely, and Harry landed on one of the still-upright tables before hopping to the next and then the next.

"_Stupefy!"_ he called, and Theo ducked – avoiding the stun spell instead of parrying it, which was interesting, but then Harry had run out of classroom the way he was going and jumped to push off the wall and go back the other way.

"_Incendio!"_ the Slytherin boy retaliated, getting back to his feet. _"Incendio! Incendio!"_

He turned to Miss Nym. "Why haven't you said I've won yet?"

"I'm actually wondering that myself," Harry had to admit, looking at the scorch marks and holes burned in his robes. "I've clearly been hit."

"Most of what you've done so far is set a dragon on fire," Miss Nym pointed out, sounding amused. "Besides, this ain't an exam where whoever wins goes through. It's how well you do."

Nott scowled, turning back to Harry, and flicked his wand. _"Expelliarmus!"_

Harry blocked with his wing, then inhaled.

"Hey, you can't set _me_ on fire!" Theo protested.

"_Aguamneti!"_ Harry mumbled, exhaling at the same time, and instead of fire what came out was a blast of water which splashed into Theo as he flinched away from what he thought was going to be flame breath. There was a lot of it, partly because Harry found out that he had a bit of trouble turning the water breath _off_ again, and once he'd finally stopped he pointed his wand.

"_Expelliarmus!"_ he called, just as Theo rolled over onto his side and called out _"Wingardium Leviosa!"_

Theo's wand went flying out of his hand, but Harry's wand lifted from where _he_ had it and went up into the air as well. The burly Slytherin stumbled to his feet, grabbing for Harry's wand, and got hold of it as it landed again.

"And that's enough!" Miss Nym said. "Well done both of you, though Mr. Nott might want to think about _not_ damaging his next opponent's robes."

She used a mending charm to fix the scorch marks in Harry's clothes, as well as his glasses – which Harry hadn't even realized had been smashed by one of the _Flipendo_ spells – and dried the floor as well as Theo with another spell.

"And, for the record, Mr. Nott," Miss Nym went on, "I'll be counting the times you cast a spell which Mr. Potter _didn't_ block with his wings fully, but all your hits will count for something because they would have worked much better against someone who wasn't a dragon."

After grumbling for a moment, Theo had to admit that that sounded fair, and Harry agreed.

"Oh, and Mr. Potter," she concluded. "My compliments to whoever decided you should learn a difficult charm like the water-making charm so early. As a dragon I can see it would be particularly useful for you."

Harry hadn't known it was such a difficult spell, but he had to admit he could see why Remus had focused on that one.

* * *

It was quite a wait for everyone else to finish the duels bit of the exam. With forty people in their year that meant forty duels, and even though each one only took a few minutes that still meant it was most of the afternoon.

"I wonder what that exam's like for the other years," Ron said, as he slumped into an armchair in the Gryffindor common room. "Like Fred and George."

"Would they be allowed to take it together?" Hermione wondered. "I imagine they do a lot better when they're working together."

"It'd be a bit unfair for whoever they were battling," Ron shrugged. "Even if there were two other people they were duelling instead of one, those two people wouldn't be as good as Fred and George."

"But is that really a good argument?" Neville asked. "At some point it stops being an unfair advantage and starts being like a fair advantage. Someone with really good memory has an unfair advantage in theory exams because they remember everything more easily, but that doesn't mean they should get harder questions."

He frowned. "But… hmm, it's kind of tricky… because it seems unfair for someone to be marked down for some things."

"I've heard that in America they sometimes use something called grading on a curve," Dean volunteered. "It means that if there's someone really smart in your class it can actually mean everybody else gets lower marks because of it."

They all contemplated that.

"You're probably glad we don't do that, Hermione," Ron said. "Everyone would blame you for their marks."

"Us four do sort of blame Hermione for our marks anyway," Harry pointed out. "It's the good kind of blame though."

"I think the word is credit," Neville said.

"Actually, how _did_ your duel go?" Dean asked. "I don't think we got around to the bit where we talked about those yet. Mostly because Ron wasn't finished."

"It's not my fault I got picked nearly last," Ron pointed out. "It was probably random or something."

He shrugged. "Anyway, it wasn't anything special. I ducked around a lot, we threw spells at one another, and I won one and lost one."

"You can't leave it at that," Dean insisted, pointing at Ron. "Really, you can't. Did you do anything cool? Did _they_ do anything cool?"

"Well, I did use the bluebell flames spell," Ron said, thinking about it. "I tried to make a field of fire that I could hide in, but it didn't work because my robes are black and the fire was bright blue."

Harry could see how that would be a problem. It was sort of like the opposite of setting yourself on fire in a dark room, if you didn't think about it too hard.

"Well, obviously you know what to do better in future," Hermione told him.

"How did yours go, Hermione?" Harry asked.

"I decided that the best thing to do would be to get really very good at a few spells," Hermione answered. "And to have a good selection of other spells for unusual situations. But I made sure I could do the Shield Charm very well, and also the Stunning Charm, and that seemed to work quite well for my battle with Ernie Macmillan. I had a bit more trouble with Draco Malfoy, though."

"You had Draco?" Neville said. "What did he do?"

"He cast a very odd spell and made a snake appear," she said. "I'd never heard of that spell before, but it worried me until I worked out that it probably wasn't actually going to attack me."

"But snakes are vicious, aren't they?" Ron asked, deeply confused.

"No, they're not," Hermione replied. "Haven't you ever been to the zoo? They're mostly quite torpid creatures."

"I don't think it'd be safe to take the Weasleys to the zoo," Dean said. "Can you imagine Fred and George trying to tease the crocodiles?"

"...fair point," Hermione admitted. "Sorry."

"It's okay, I was mostly thinking about Ashwinders and stuff," Ron said. "They're really dangerous because they set everything on fire."

Dean turned to Neville. "What about you?"

"Oh, I… didn't really do very well," Neville said. "Justin said it was okay, but he had to go to Madam Pomfrey afterwards..."

Ron blinked. "Did someone turn over two pages at once?"

Neville rubbed his knuckles. "I couldn't get the Disarming Charm working, so I panicked and punched him..."

They thought about that for a bit.

"It'll probably be okay," Ron guessed. "She put Charlie back together after he got bitten by a Manticore in NEWT Care of Magical Creatures, a broken nose or whatever will be fine."

Dean went next, explaining how he'd relied on a trick where he cast spells at the floor, and that had made big explosions which kept his opponent guessing but eventually Daphne had got him with a Leg-Locker Jinx and won that way. He'd managed to beat Vincent Crabbe, though he said it was mostly luck.

When Harry explained how he'd done, it turned out that everyone was quite impressed. Which was probably a good sign.

None of them were really sure how they should go from there, though, except that Neville wondered if he should just learn how to conjure a big padded wooden bat and a shield and fight that way.

* * *

"Well, Potions tomorrow," Ron said, once they'd finally finished with that line of conversation. "Which is going to be pretty bad, if you ask me."

"Potions is all right," Dean frowned. "It's not great, yeah, but usually we do okay."

"That's the thing, it's not going to be the two of us," Ron explained. "It's going to be you doing your own potion, and me doing my own potion. We've been doing teamwork with these potions all year and now we have to do them solo."

That sounded like a good point to Harry. It was sort of like the handicap thing again, only worse because there really wasn't much of a way to get extra Potions practice in the middle of the year without brewing some in the toilets or something.

Maybe he should ask Professor Snape about it next year? Or maybe when Percy was next around he'd ask the Prefect about how they did NEWT Potions – was _that_ a solo thing rather than a two-person thing?

Sometimes Harry wanted to see what the National Curriculum looked like for teaching magic, but then he remembered that Hogwarts was the only school in the first place so there wasn't much point in having a National Curriculum.

* * *

AN:

Oh, look, some fighting!

Harry skips so many years of exams in the source books it's sometimes a little hard to judge what the appropriate level is.


	33. A Dragon Board

"Well, that's it," Dean said, as they all filed out of an exam room two days later. "Exams are over for the year."

"Pity, isn't it," Hermione agreed absently, checking that all her compass equipment was back where it had started.

"Um… no?" Dean blinked. "I'm mostly kind of glad that we can't make big mistakes any more. It's always really worrying when there's exams on, I'm afraid I'll forget something."

"Professor Dumbledore said that the point of the holidays is to let us empty our heads so we can fill them up again next year," Harry pointed out.

"Yes, but Professor Dumbledore, not to put too fine a point on it, is mad," Neville contributed. "Wonderful, but mad."

"That's how I sometimes feel about magic in general," Dean said.

"What did you guys put for question five?" Ron asked. "I couldn't remember whether Eta Carinae was a supernova or a big mass eruption, so I might have got that one wrong..."

"It's got a big nebula, but I don't _think_ it's an actual supernova," Hermione answered, frowning. "Just a _potential_ supernova."

"Ah, bloody hell," Ron groaned. "I hate that I got that wrong."

"It did get really bright last century," Hermione assured him. "So it might be worth some marks. Did you think of some good comets for question four?"

"Yeah, Shoemaker-Levy and Halley were the obvious ones," Ron replied. "Then I got the Great Comet as well..."

Harry was sort of listening, but there was something else he remembered he should be doing. He still needed to wrap up that gift he'd been making for Mr. Malfoy, because he wasn't sure when Mr. Malfoy would be turning up with the board of governors but it would be good to be as ready as possible.

"What do you think, Harry?" Dean asked. "Any ideas for how we could celebrate being done with exams?"

"I think I know how Oliver Wood is going to insist I celebrate," Harry said. "Remember how the last Quidditch game of the season is next week?"

"Oof, yeah, good point," Dean admitted. "I hadn't thought of that."

Harry shrugged his wings. "I think we're all just glad he was persuaded not to do practice during the exams."

"But do you need to do practice?" Neville asked. "You're ridiculously good."

"I think I really should anyway, if I'm going to be on the team," Harry explained. "The others need to know how well I can play, and stuff."

"And it's going to be a pretty long game, probably," Ron interjected. "Ravenclaw did really, _really_ well so far, partly because of that four-hour match back in April, so Gryffindor needs about an eight-goal lead before Harry can catch the Snitch."

"That's just making me think about how Quidditch needs a major rules rethink," Dean muttered. "If Gryffindor could win all three matches and still lose the cup?"

"That's Quidditch for you," Neville shrugged. "If it was less mad I think people would just play Quodpot."

* * *

Harry made a quick trip to Fort William that evening, to see if any new books had turned up since the start of the exam season, and while the first bookshop he visited didn't seem to have any new ones of the sort _he_ was interested in there was one which was so intriguing that he got it for Ron instead – just as a nice thing to do. It was a book about people going to the planet Mars and living on it, called Red Mars, which was a sort of fun title because Mars was red already.

It also said it was the first book of a trilogy, so maybe the other ones would be named after other colours? Either way, Harry was sure that Ron would be interested in it.

It didn't look like there was anything new that his other friends would be interested in, but in the library Harry found something that he enjoyed for a reason that was quite different to what he expected.

At first, when he found a new book called _Dragon Boy_, he'd quite reasonably assumed that it was about someone like him – a boy who had turned into a dragon. As it turned out, though, it was about something quite different and almost the reverse of what had happened to him, which was a boy who got _adopted_ by a family of dragons.

(Apparently this was partly because they were on a strict no-humans diet to lose weight.)

Harry didn't finish it that day, but he decided to take it out of the library and make several copies with his book-copying spell so that he could show people like Hagrid. And buy a proper copy when he got back to Surrey, as well, because that seemed only kind.

* * *

The next day, at Quidditch practice, Harry got to wondering about good Quidditch weather and bad Quidditch weather.

It was obviously a bit different for him, because he was a dragon and didn't much care about temperature differences (or rain, for that matter), but for everyone else what _would_ be good weather? It was sometimes a problem to play football in really hot weather, but in Quidditch anyone who was playing pretty much any position would be able to get a fifty-mile-an-hour breeze past them whenever they wanted.

Rain would be a problem just because all the droplets would hit someone really hard, but hail would be much worse… and then there was wind, as well, which could blow someone off course if it was strong enough.

Harry had to focus for a bit on something else, which was being the supporting Chaser in an attack by Cormac Maclaggen (while the rest of the Gryffindor team played defence) but once he was done with that he thought about it a bit more and decided that the worst kind of weather to play Quidditch in had to be fog, or anything else where you couldn't see the balls or other players or the ground.

Like night-time, actually.

Then there was heavy rain or hail or snow, that was pretty bad as well, and so was any weather when it was cold. A Seeker playing in freezing rain who didn't have the advantage of being a dragon would probably have to have some warming charms…

Really, it seemed like the best weather for a Quidditch match was the day _after_ rain, when the air was clear and there was a nice mostly-clear sky. It would be extra good if it was in the summer, as well, so that the air was warm and moving around at high speed would make it a comfortable temperature.

But, then again, maybe they just used magic to deal with rain, snow and cold.

* * *

Two days before the Quidditch final, Harry was listening as Oliver Wood reminded him (again) that he was to _not_ catch the Snitch until they had enough points.

Harry had tried saying he knew, but Oliver was very insistent, and he was just running Harry through how he should keep an eye on the Snitch and block the _Ravenclaw_ Seeker from catching it when Hedwig came flying down towards them.

Harry flicked his tail across to act as a perch, and Hedwig landed on it – making the Nimbus 2001 bob down slightly – and permitted Harry to take the letter from her beak.

"Is something up?" Oliver asked, drifting a little closer. "Doesn't your owl know to deliver letters at breakfast?"

Hedwig's head snapped around, and she gave Oliver such a glare that he recoiled.

"Yeah, but she also knows that sometimes something's really urgent," Harry explained, opening the letter with his claw.

_Harry,_ it read.

_I'm very sorry to pull you away from what is doubtless a fine way to spend a summer morning (or afternoon, depending on how long it takes for this letter to be delivered) but I was hoping that we could discuss your extra-curricular activities this summer._

_I am afraid that having the conversation as soon as possible would be preferable, and I can tell you that my current office password is Opal Fruits._

_Hoping this finds you in good health,_

_Albus Dumbledore (Grand Sorceror, Supreme Mugwump, Et Cetera.)_

"Sorry, Oliver, I'm going to need to go and see Professor Dumbledore," Harry said, folding up the letter again. "It sounds urgent – I'll come back here once I'm done."

"Well..." Oliver began, then nodded. "If it's urgent, that's fine. I'm not _completely_ Quidditch obsessed."

"I beg to differ!" Fred called.

"Oi!" Oliver shouted back. "Right, we're doing Bludger defence drills – Cormac, grab a bat!"

* * *

Harry's trip back to the castle passed quickly. He flew over Hagrid and Professor Kettleburn (who seemed to be teaching Nora to dive, which she was clearly enjoying) and went straight into Gryffindor Tower.

The way the windows were open to let in some cool air during the summer helped, though Harry supposed that _technically_ he could fly in through the windows in winter if he was able to repair them.

That done, he stowed his broomstick, before picking up the wrapped present just in case.

"Oh, is Quidditch practice over already?" Neville asked, looking up from watering one of his spider plants. "That doesn't seem like Oliver Wood."

"No, I've got a meeting with the headmaster," Harry explained, picking up some note parchment and a quill as well. "I'll probably go back to the practice if it doesn't take too long."

He wondered about whether he should bring a book, but it seemed like a rude idea, and besides there were several books in Dumbledore's office anyway.

* * *

"Ah, Harry, it's very nice to see you," Professor Dumbledore said, as Harry climbed up through the spiral stairs. "Tell me, how is your Quidditch practice going? I've been wondering whether scheduling the final game after the exams was working out."

"I think it's going okay, Sir," Harry replied, after thinking about it a bit. "I'm not really sure if I'll be still playing Quidditch after this year, though."

"Oh?" the Headmaster asked, raising his eyebrows over his spectacles, and waved his wand – making a pot of tea, some biscuits and the appropriate chinaware appear on his desk. "Is there something wrong with it?"

"Mostly that I'd like to do other clubs," Harry explained. "I keep feeling like I don't have enough time to do everything, and I've got an idea for a club to run myself next year – but I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep it up, it depends how much homework my extra lessons will be."

"A fine reason, Harry, a fine reason," Dumbledore said. "Shall I be mother?"

Harry blinked. "Pardon?"

"Ah, something I see you've not encountered," Dumbledore smiled. "It's simply the way in which people ask if they are going to pour the tea."

"I'm okay not having any, Sir," Harry replied. "Where did it come from? I'm pretty sure the textbook says you can't conjure food, though I can eat things that most people don't call food anyway."

"And that is true," Dumbledore agreed. "It is, indeed, impossible to conjure good food. In this case, however, the tea was prepared ahead of time by a delightful house-elf named Farley and the biscuits are from my own personal collection. Do try one of those, at least."

Harry did so, picking up a chocolate-coated one and giving it a nibble. It seemed really rather nice, though it wasn't one he was familiar with.

"Now, as to why I wished to speak to you, Harry," Dumbledore went on. "Firstly, I wanted to remind you about where it would be best for you to stay over the course of the summer."

"I know I'm going back to Privet Weyr for the first month," Harry assured him. "Is it a month? I'm not sure of how long it takes the magic to recharge."

"Alas, I am unsure myself," Dumbledore admitted. "But since a month worked out well last summer – for I can tell that the spell is still in place – then a month should be fine if you are not too troubled by it."

Harry nodded, fairly sure he'd be okay with a month. It would mean he could get his homework done, pick up some books, and so on, and depending on when the letter went out for what they needed for school he could get his things for Third Year at the same time.

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced. "Then there is the other matter, which is those spells which it would be ideal for you to learn at some point, preferably quite soon, but which are rather too dangerous to practice here at Hogwarts – even if you had the time."

He smiled at that, as if there was a joke, but Harry wasn't sure what it was.

"You mean the Fiendfyre spell you mentioned, Professor?" Harry checked.

"Quite correct, Harry," Dumbledore agreed. "And any other spells which fall into that same category, as I am sure there will be some. Now, I know that young Sirius has a house in Hogsmeade now, but Fiendfyre is a little too dangerous to practice there either, and in any case it would be best to work up to it with some less destructive spells. I merely wished to assure you that I am aware of the difficulty and I am doing my best to come up with a solution."

Harry supposed that that was nice to know, and said so.

Dumbledore put a finger to his chin. "Perhaps-" he began, and then stopped.

"Professor?" Harry asked, worried.

"It seems we are about to have some visitors," Dumbledore explained. "I believe this must be the board of governors about to grace us with their presence."

* * *

Harry had met a board of governors before, at primary school, but they hadn't been very intimidating people and they'd mostly asked him about how he thought Little Whinging JMI was doing and if anything could be better.

Thinking about it now, Harry realized that what he'd said about maybe having a landing pad in case it was raining had probably not made much sense, at least to the board of governors – at the time he'd thought that everyone could see he was a dragon, and he'd spread his wings to emphasize the point, but since he now knew that to Muggles doing that just looked like spreading his hands he probably didn't manage to persuade them.

This board of governors sort of looked similar, except they were all wizards and one or two witches. Mr. Malfoy was first, then four people who Harry didn't recognize, and they all stopped to look at him.

"Albus, what is this?" asked one of the wizards Harry didn't recognize. "Why is the Potter dragon here?"

"Ah, Grosvenor," Dumbledore smiled. "It is as much of a pleasure as always to see you. As I don't believe you've met, this is Harry Potter. Harry, this is Grosvenor Pucey, one of the Board of Governors."

Harry waved.

"I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Mr. Potter is here," Mr. Malfoy said.

"Alas, the best I have is a slightly _un_reasonable explanation," Dumbledore said cheerfully. "I'm afraid I was discussing things with Mr. Potter and quite lost track of the time of this meeting."

Harry had the feeling that there were things going on that he didn't fully follow.

"I'm sure it won't be a problem, Albus," said one of the other governors, a witch with a cheerful smile.

Mr. Pucey pursed his lips. "This is a serious issue, Amritt. The headmaster of Hogwarts must respect the authority of the board of governors."

"I assure you, Grosvenor, I have a great deal of respect for the board of governors," Dumbledore said. "Would any of you like some tea?"

The witch called Amritt accepted, as did one of the other wizards, and Mr. Pucey waited while the tea was poured out before resuming.

"Albus," he said, with a sort of sigh. "You must realize that we've allowed your little entertainments long enough. It's been a worthy experiment – a noble experiment, I suppose – but by now the futility of it must be obvious."

"I suppose you're right," Dumbledore sighed, looking downcast. "I was really hoping that I could pull off golden stars on a silver background."

He put one of the teacups away. "I suppose I shall have to replace it with one with more complimentary colours."

"Amusing," Mr. Malfoy said, drily. "But of course the experiment to which Grosvenor refers is the non-human students at the school. Need I remind you, Albus, that fifty years ago there was a non-human student at this school and he was expelled in his third year?"

"You do not need to remind me, Lucius, I remember it quite well," Professor Dumbledore said. "Though I do not see the relevance to current events."

"They're _dangerous!"_ Mr. Pucey burst out. "There have been complaints – the Sphinx attacked someone last term!"

"Ah, I believe I remember the incident," Professor Dumbledore said. "Miss Sanura was most apologetic, and has promised to keep her reactions under better control in the future, but to my memory the correct way to describe the incident would be that Miss Goldhorn was going through Miss Lovegood's things at the time, and Miss Sanura naturally reacted strongly to the possibility that someone would steal from her friend."

"I wasn't aware of this," said the last member of the delegation, a witch Harry hadn't met. "Grosvenor, you told us that that incident was an _unprovoked_ attack."

"Perhaps it was just a matter of interpretation?" Mr. Malfoy suggested.

"No, I distinctly remember that the word _unprovoked_ was used," the witch insisted. "And you said she was quite badly hurt."

"Nothing more than a bad case of being frightened and a bit of shoving, I believe," Dumbledore said mildly. "I will of course be keeping an eye on the situation, Grosvenor, but you must remember that this _is_ a school, after all. If I were to punish students severely for shoving one another I dare say there would be twenty detentions a week for that alone."

Mr. Pucey looked slightly lost, and Harry saw him glance at Mr. Malfoy.

"Perhaps we should consider that one as a minor disciplinary incident, since handled," Lucius suggested. "I hope there's not a pattern of such incidents, though?"

"Not with Miss Sanura, certainly," Professor Dumbledore smiled. "Aside from that minor matter, she's been a model student – and, indeed, I would dare say that a witch who reacted with outrage to defend her friend would be a better _person_ than one who did not, so long as nobody was hurt in the process."

He tapped his finger on his chin. "Certainly I would not say the same of a witch who was willing to take something from another student's possessions."

"What about the other one, the wolf?" Mr. Pucey demanded. "I can't believe that a _wolf_ from a _forest_ could possibly fit in at Hogwarts – either behaving properly _or_ passing exams."

He sniffed. "You must understand that, just because there was that ill-advised amendment, you can't simply pull in whoever you meet."

"Though that isn't the only concern we have," Mr. Malfoy interjected. "There are of course concerns in general about, ah, pranks… my son has told me there's something of a notorious problem with some quite cruel pranks being played by two Gryffindor fourth-years."

"You must be referring to Fred and George Weasley," Dumbledore declared. "Indeed, you are correct, though I will note that again they are usually punished in school. It also seems that they may have met something not far from their match, recently – a pair of first-year Slytherins have been contesting them, quite successfully."

His eyes twinkled merrily. "I have asked them all whether they would like to stop, but for some reason none of them displays the least bit of interest."

"Is that how you keep control of students, Albus?" Mr. Pucey said, with a hint of a sneer. "You ask nicely?"

"I have found it works quite well," Dumbledore replied mildly. "Manners can take you quite a long way, Grosvenor."

"Be that as it may, Albus," Mr. Malfoy said, with a little smile. "I believe Grosvenor mentioned the problem with that young wolf?"

"Yes, the young miss June Forrester," Dumbledore agreed. "Is there a problem? Hufflepuff has quite whole-heartedly accepted her, you know."

"That doesn't mean anything," Mr. Pucey said, shaking his head. "Hufflepuff would accept a lettuce."

"Grosvenor!" gasped the witch who Harry didn't know anything about.

"What?" Mr. Pucey replied airily. "It's true! And just because they say that they don't have a problem doesn't mean there isn't a problem."

"If there was a lettuce that could do schoolwork and cast magic, wouldn't it be okay to make them a student?" Harry asked.

Everybody except Dumbledore jumped.

"Goodness, I quite forgot you were there," said the other wizard.

"Why _is_ the Potter boy here?" Mr. Pucey asked.

"Why not?" Harry said, who'd spent the time thinking about the ways that what was going on was like what he'd _thought_ was going to happen. "You're talking about June like she might have to leave the school, but she's followed all the rules, and she's been doing her best on her exams!"

Harry's wings flapped out a little. "She asked me for help about being able to write better, and she _does_ still have trouble with it, but if that's the only reason she failed her exams then that isn't really fair, is it? It's like she got less time to write than anyone else did."

"I hardly think this is appropriate," Mr. Pucey said.

"Well, Mr. Potter is friends with our other non-human students," Dumbledore replied pleasantly. "Did you have more to say, Harry?"

"I just wanted to say that, um… if you're talking about expelling someone, then you shouldn't have to ask about whether they did something wrong," Harry said. "It seems like… well, like it would have to be really obvious and someone would have to be really bad to get expelled. I mean, You-Know-Who went to school here, and he wasn't expelled."

Mr. Malfoy looked slightly annoyed by what Harry had just said, and Mr. Pucey seemed to have found a lemon to bite into somewhere, but the other governors were nodding. Harry was quite proud of that, because it was the one he thought was probably his best argument.

"Just because you defeated You-Know-Who does not earn you special treatment, boy," Mr. Pucey retorted.

"But… I don't want special treatment," Harry said, puzzled. "I don't know what counts as being something that means you need to be expelled, but I don't think I've done anything that's even against the rules."

"And what about what you said about the wolf?" Mr. Pucey said.

"Well, I don't really think she's a wolf," Harry replied, frowning. "We talked about it, and she said that she liked the sound of the word warg. You know, from the Lord of the Rings."

None of the governors seemed to understand what Harry meant by that.

"If one looked back far enough, one might discover that Miss Forrester qualified as human," Dumbledore mused. "Her family is descended from a werewolf, and a werewolf qualifies as human, and as was previously discussed-"

"There can't be any proof-" Mr. Pucey began, but Mr. Malfoy interrupted him and he immediately went quiet.

"Perhaps we should end this line of questioning, before Albus asks us to all prove that _we_ are human," Mr. Malfoy said, with a little chuckle. "I think we can at least agree that, regardless of whether or not Miss Forrester _deserves_ any more exam time, her exam results stand. I must regretfully insist that she be treated the same as any other student who fails and be removed from the school."

"Dear me, that seems quite a request," Dumbledore replied. "My condolences, Lucius, on your son having to leave the school."

Mr. Malfoy stopped smiling.

"What?" he demanded.

"Well, you see, Miss Forrester did really rather well," Dumbledore explained. "Harry and Miss Tanisis did both score more highly than she did, but Miss Forrester was a little less than halfway up the class rankings. I'm afraid that if we did exclude all students who scored less well than she did we'd lose nearly half of Hogwarts."

"Then there seems no real point in insisting," said Amritt. "It seems that Albus' great experiment is going quite well so far."

"Those results can't possibly be genuine!" Mr. Pucey insisted. "The wolf – she – she grew up in a _forest!_ How can she have done better than half the class?"

"By studying?" Harry asked. "I know she worked very hard on learning English."

"Well, Grosvenor, if you insist that her test results were incorrect, we could of course look at her school work," Dumbledore suggested mildly. "By a very great coincidence, I happen to have the entire body of work for that school year in my cupboard. I believe it was a mistake by the house-elf who cleaned the room this morning, and I was not particularly relishing getting it all sorted out again."

"I believe we've taken quite enough of Albus' time," Mr. Malfoy said, after a few seconds of frowning.

"Oh," Harry said, suddenly remembering something.

The whole meeting hadn't gone anything like he'd expected it to, being much more of a friendly conversation than like when he'd had to speak to the Wizengamot, but there was one thing he'd been trying not to forget.

It took a moment of hunting around to find the present, which had fallen out from under his wing when he'd been talking, but once it was found he held it out in one paw to Mr. Malfoy.

"I know we had a bit of a fight last year in Diagon Alley," he said. "But I thought it might help if I tried to make up with you, Sir."

"Well, well, a dragon with manners," Mr. Malfoy noted, taking the present – wrapped in silver and green paper, which Harry had taken care to get from Blaise. "Will wonders never cease."

He squeezed it, and frowned slightly. "Clothing, Potter?"

"I knitted it myself," Harry explained. "Why? Is there a problem?"

"I do hope you weren't trying to free my house-elf," Mr. Malfoy said, then smiled slightly. "Just a joke, of course."

He nodded his thanks to Harry, and followed the other governors down the stairs. Harry caught one of them saying something about how Mr. Malfoy's house-elf wasn't a very good house-elf to begin with.

* * *

Harry spent the afternoon, and the next day, mostly embroiled in Quidditch practice. Oliver Wood wanted to win the Quidditch Cup with himself as the captain at least once, as he explained, and there were only two years left to try and do that in.

He did wonder a bit about what Percy thought about Oliver, with how Percy thought that getting good grades was extremely important while Oliver was quite willing to spend all hours of the day and night training at Quidditch, working on Quidditch strategies or in extreme cases _talking_ about Quidditch. But, then again, maybe that was part of why Percy had ended up a heron.

(Harry assumed that if you lived in a dorm room with Oliver Wood for years you ended up at least somewhat interested in Quidditch, if only as a self-defence mechanism.)

Then came the day of the final.

* * *

"Okay, look," Fred said, looking up at the sky. "Harry, I'm not saying you should catch the Snitch quickly."

"In fact, I'm saying you _shouldn't_ catch the Snitch quickly," George added. "Because if you do that and we don't win then Oliver will _literally_ flatten you."

Harry looked at his body. "I'm not sure I _can_ be flattened," he said, thinking about it. "I've got a rib cage, and everything else about me is very tough, so I think the ribs must be even tougher."

"Oh, he'd find a way," Alicia agreed. "Wouldn't you, Oliver?"

"If it's related to Quidditch, then yes," Oliver called, checking his formation diagrams. "Otherwise, no."

"There you go," said George. (Harry wasn't certain that that twin was George, but he _was_ sure that that twin was the twin who turned into a mink. Once they picked Marauder names, or someone picked Marauder names for them, he'd know better which twin was which Marauder than which Marauder was which of Fred or George.)

"As I was saying," Fred interrupted. "I'm not saying you should catch the Snitch quickly, but I've got a couple of things to say about that anyway. Firstly, it's probably good if you catch the Snitch as soon as catching it would let us win."

He pointed up. "And, secondly, if the game goes long enough, we might need to find out how resistant dragons are to being struck by lightning."

Harry followed Fred's arm, but he already knew what Fred was talking about.

The air had been feeling kind of heavy all morning, and as Harry understood it that was actually because there was less air than normal. It was a little bit harder to fly by flapping his wings, though not much, because the pressure was low.

That was a sign of bad weather on the way. Though he had to admit that the giant towering thunderhead cloud looming over the area was a _better_ sign of bad weather on the way.

"Any idea how long we have before it arrives?" Alicia asked.

Fred shook his head, but George took out his wand and cast a spell to tell him what the time was.

Waving his wand to dispel the numbers, he muttered something under his breath – counting on his fingers one at a time.

"...nope," he said eventually. "No clue."

"Great, thanks," Alicia snorted.

"The match is starting soon, though," George added. "So we should probably head to the pitch."

* * *

Almost the moment the game began, Harry had things to do.

He wasn't meant to be going after the Snitch just yet, but Oliver had him flying interference for the Chasers – first making sure that the Ravenclaw Chaser, Roger Davies, couldn't get past to reach Katie without flying directly through Harry, and then using his wing to block a Bludger shot.

The whole of the first five minutes of the game were like that, a back-and-forth melee that saw three Gryffindor goals and two Ravenclaw ones, and then finally things seemed to calm down a little bit and Oliver waved a signal at Harry.

Harry recognized it as the one they'd talked about where Harry was meant to play Snitch defence, and tilted his broom up a little to gain height. He'd already spotted the Snitch, flitting along by the grass, but so long as the Ravenclaw Seeker didn't see it he was okay – and he was closer to it than she was, despite how he was higher in the air, so he'd be able to block her if he had to.

Angelina scored. Then Fred fouled a Ravenclaw pass with a Bludger, but Jeremy Stretton managed to snag the Quaffle and score a point in return.

Forty-twenty. Fifty-twenty. Fifty-thirty. The score went up, slowly but steadily, and the Gryffindor lead grew and then shrank… everyone might have wanted the game to be over before the weather broke, but since neither side wanted to _concede_ the game just to let that happen it all gave the play an energy that Harry hadn't really had the chance to see before.

As he was orbiting over some of the emptier parts of the stands, though, Harry saw a strange sight.

A house-elf was watching the game, long fingers scrunched up as he gripped the fabric of a familiar-looking pillowcase… and there was a paper hat made of silver and green wrapping paper on his head.

Glancing at the pitch to check on where the Snitch was – the Ravenclaw seeker was a long way away from it – Harry dropped a little lower.

"Dobby?" he asked.

Dobby had already seen him, and nodded quickly.

"Harry Potter is very wise!" he said. "And so kind, to recognize Dobby after so long..."

The house-elf looked down for a moment. "Dobby is very sorry for making your first Quidditch match go so badly."

"It's okay, Dobby," Harry told him, glancing back at the game again to make sure he wasn't needed. The score was now ninety-fifty, and the Gryffindors cheered as Katie made it 100-50, but an ominous rumbling made it sound like the thunderstorm didn't have long to wait.

"Dobby, do you work for the Malfoys?" Harry asked, then.

Dobby gasped.

"How did Harry Potter know?" he asked, clutching his pillowcase, and his hat nearly fell off.

Then Cho Chang began to dive, and Harry had to cut short the conversation to head her off – stopping her from catching the glittering spark of gold, without actually catching it himself.

* * *

Half an hour later, the game was still going and the rain was coming down in sheets. Water drummed on Harry's head, slid off his wings in waves, and a few minutes ago there'd been an earsplitting thundercrack as a bolt of lightning struck the tallest tree in the Forbidden Forest.

It hadn't hit the Hogwarts Astronomy Tower, which was higher, but maybe that was because as far as the Astronomy Tower was concerned it wasn't stormy at all.

"Gryffindor scores!" Lee Jordan called. "Or so I'm told! It's now one hundred and ninety to one hundred and ten!"

Lee was exaggerating, it was still possible to see the bright red Quaffle, but it was a bit too dark to easily see the Snitch. Unless-

A bolt of sheet lightning blazed across the sky, and Harry saw it. He turned, wings tracing a path through the sky, and beat his wings as hard as they would go.

His catch of the Snitch was more a sort of _splat_, as he couldn't pull up before he hit the ground and traced a muddy furrow twenty feet long, but when he held it up and Madam Hooch blew the whistle he was pretty sure he could hear the sigh of relief from the entire audience.

Even Ravenclaw. It was _far_ too wet.

* * *

"That's three catches out of three!" Ron said, an hour or so later, once the celebration in Gryffindor Common Room had calmed down _slightly_ and the friends could get a table to themselves. "Harry, that's just amazing!"

Harry shrugged. "If you say so."

"Come on, Harry," Dean said, sniggering. "You've scored four hundred and fifty points for Gryffindor's Quidditch team this year. And since it's about the only sport we have – despite my best efforts – you _should_ feel proud."

That made Harry smile a little.

"So, how are you going to do next year?" Ron added.

"I'm… actually thinking of not doing Quidditch," Harry admitted.

Ron groaned. "What, really?"

"Well… it just takes up too much time," Harry replied. "With my schoolwork, I barely have the time for anything else, and I'd rather do other things than do Quidditch."

"You _are_ mental, mate," Ron pronounced. "But who's going to be the Seeker if you're not?"

"Cormac?" Neville suggested. "He's the backup."

"Well, there goes any hope of any of my teams catching the Snitch for the next year," Ron commented.

"Oi," Ginny snorted. "You do remember I'll be in second year next year, right? I might not be as good at _seeing_ the Snitch as Harry is, but I'll give you a run for your money trying to _catch_ it."

"Shouldn't that be give _Harry_ a run for _his_ money?" Hermione asked pedantically.

"What?" Ginny replied, confused. "No. Harry's ridiculously good. I'm just hoping to be good by the standards of normal Quidditch."

"So what are you going to be doing with the free time from not doing Quidditch?" Dean asked.

Harry had been thinking about that, so he began counting on his talons. "Read more books. Go to visit Fort William more often. Go to visit Hogsmeade, because we can do that in Third Year-"

"Kind of redundant for you to go visit Hogsmeade, isn't it?" Ron asked. "If you can fly to Fort William, I mean."

"It's still nice," Harry shrugged. "There was also an idea I had to set up a kind of… support meeting, for all the non-human students, because Tanisis and June had problems this year and they didn't know who to talk to about them. And I was also thinking about doing that Dungeons and Dragons thing, too."

"That would be pretty cool," Neville agreed. "Maybe we can have a story in this one."

"That's kind of a lot of things from cancelling one sports club, isn't it?" Dean asked.

"Oliver Wood is a bit obsessed," Harry explained. "But I might not have time for all those things, because we'll be doing more subjects."

"I think it should be possible to fit all those things in," Hermione judged. "Percy says that you have enough time in the day even if you're a Prefect doing twelve subjects, though all he said about how was that the teachers can help make it work."

She shrugged. "I'm not really sure what that means, honestly. There's only twenty-four hours in a day."

"Unless you're Weyrlady Moreta," Harry pointed out.

"Moreta?" Neville asked. "I don't remember that one."

"I'll lend you a copy," Harry promised.

"We're _way_ off topic," Ron said. "So… how bad _was_ it flying out there? We had Nora's wing to shelter under and it was still really wet."

"Did Nora have something to shelter under?" Harry asked.

"Hagrid put up his umbrella," Hermione supplied. "He told Nora not to eat it, and she didn't, so I think that worked."

Harry smiled at the thought, then remembered what Ron had asked. "Oh, actually, there was one thing that was kind of odd… Dobby was in the stands."

"Did the Quaffle try to tie your tail in a knot?" Ginny asked. "I think I would have noticed that."

"No, I think he was just watching," Harry replied. "He said sorry, but… I worked out whose he is. He's Mr. Malfoy's House-Elf."

"Merlin's lugholes!" Ron breathed.

"Ron!" Hermione said sharply. "Language!"

Ron began to protest, and Hermione raised a hand. "No, wait, hold on. Lugholes… that's ear holes, right?"

"Well, yeah," Ron agreed. "I wanted to be a bit more creative and less rude."

"Then I apologize," Hermione told him.

"So now we know whose House-Elf Dobby is," Neville said. "What do we actually _do_ with that?"

"Well, I'm going to make sure Dumbledore knows," Harry replied. "But apart from that… I really kind of wish there was a way to get him free from there."

"But there is," Hermione told them all. "I don't know if Dobby knows it – it's one of the horrible things they used to do with badly treated slaves, they tried to not let them know there was a way to escape – but it's illegal to treat a House-Elf the way they were treating Dobby."

"It might be illegal, but I don't really think most of the awful pure-blood households who treat their elves badly care about that," Neville said.

"They will," Hermione insisted. "They will if I have _anything_ to say about it."

"Well, Malfoy's doomed," Dean decided.

"Probably," Ginny agreed.

She took out her wand, and looked at it.

"It's going to be so weird not being allowed to use this," she mused. "You get used to it, right?"

"No," Ron told her. "Not at all. Oh, by the way, charge up a few quills with an ink eraser spell on the feathers, and do your homework _early_."

"...are you sure you're my brother?" Ginny demanded. "And not a Metamorphagus or something?"

"We're all Metamorphaguses," Ron replied. "Didn't you know? Mum must not have told you yet."

"Nice try, but I've seen Fred, George and Percy's Animagus forms," Ginny countered. "But why are _you_ saying I should do my homework early?"

"Because it's _way_ easier if you can erase the words you get wrong," Ron explained. "Though I am really kind of interested in that thing from the New Scientist, I might have to find a way to watch fellytision."

"Television?" Hermione asked. "And what thing do you mean?"

"The comet," Ron reminded her.

"Oh, that's _next_ summer, they think," Hermione told him. "But that does remind me, we never did work out what kinds of electrical things work at Hogwarts..."

* * *

The last few days of Harry's time at Hogwarts as a Second Year were a lot like the last few days of his time at Hogwarts as a First Year – a mixture of saying goodbye, and packing up, and making whatever notes might help with their homework over the summer.

They got their marks, which were good overall – Neville's Potions score was still the worst any of them had in any subject, but it was improving – and they all had to write down what subjects they were going to take just to be certain.

The main difference was when Harry went down to Hagrid's hut, not only to say goodbye to him but to say goodbye to Nora as well.

"Goodbye?" Nora repeated, frowning. "Oh! So you going back to your room?"

"Sort of," Harry replied. "It's like… you remember last summer? I had to go for two months, while you got bigger, and when I got back you'd learned to talk."

"I learned to talk!" Nora agreed proudly, head tilted a little, then her face fell. "You have to go?"

She looked at herself, checking how big her wings were, then spread them out. "Until I'm this much bigger?"

"I'll be back in two months," Harry assured her. "I don't think you'll be _that_ much bigger by then."

"Months?" Nora repeated, looking over at Hagrid. "What's a month?"

"About ten and ten and ten days," Hagrid answered.

Harry closed his eyes. "Thirty is," he began, opened them again, and said "Thirty."

"Thanks, Harry," Hagrid said. "I'll remember that one. Right useful one."

Harry wondered if Hagrid was going to end up speaking Dragonish better than he spoke English.

"Will _you_ get bigger?" Nora asked then. "You used to be bigger than me. Now you're smaller."

"I might get a _bit_ bigger?" Harry said, shrugging his wings. "I don't know."

Nora then pounced suddenly forwards, wrapping her forelegs around Harry – wings and all – and giving him a fierce hug.

Then she recoiled, loosening her grip, and looked back at Hagrid.

"Go ahead," Hagrid told her. "Harry's tough."

Thus reassured, she hugged Harry again.

"Sad you won't be here," she told him.

* * *

The leaving feast came next, where Professor Dumbledore asked to say a few words before everybody got down to having their dinner.

As it transpired, the few words he wanted to say were the words 'few, fewer, fewest, fewtrils, fewfold, fewel.'

He then awarded the House Cup to Ravenclaw, the Quidditch Cup to Gryffindor, and told them all that they should enjoy as much of the food as possible, as it would be far too stale to serve as leftovers when they came back.

* * *

"I think this is about as many people as we can fit into this compartment," Ron mused, as the Hogwarts Express raced through what was probably southern Scotland. "If we want anyone else in here, it'd have to be Percy."

"Why Percy?" Dean asked.

"I'm fairly sure he knows how to expand rooms and stuff," Ron explained. "It's not like there's anyone else I can think of who could."

"Or Harry could just set up his tent," George suggested. "Or those of us who've learned how to turn into animals yet could just turn into animals, which would free up a bit more space."

"Could work," Ron nodded.

Further conversation was interrupted for a few minutes when Ginny's owl Pigwidgeon got loose, and promptly bounced off all the walls with a series of increasingly enthusiastic chirrups until Harry caught him in a pair of cupped wings.

"Hold on a moment," Ginny requested, getting out some parchment and scribbling on it. "...there we go. Hey, Pig? Got a letter for you to take!"

The hyperactive little owl perked up, bouncing over and offering his leg. Ginny tied the note to it, then opened the window and threw him out.

"Who's that to?" Neville asked.

"Mum and Dad, actually," Ginny admitted. "I just wanted to make sure he had something to do."

She frowned. "Actually, maybe we should rest Errol over the summer by having Pig do all the work, he's certainly good for it."

"Sounds like a plan," Ron nodded.

"Oh!" Fred said, with a sound like that of someone who'd just had a great revelation.

"What is it?" his twin asked, looking at where Fred was in _Tooth and Fang_. "Is it even funnier than they've been saying?"

"Well, yeah, but that's not what I was gasping about," Fred replied. "I just realized – our DADA teacher this year!"

He paused expectantly.

Everybody else waited expectantly.

"...well, go on then, you prat," Ron said eventually.

"Pseudonym," Fred answered. "I bet Sue D. Nym wasn't her real name after all."

"Are you sure?" Hermione asked. "It _does_ sounds like it, but then again Professor Vector teaches Arithmancy."

"But that would mean that it would be a good name for someone who was undercover," George pointed out. "So maybe that _is_ her name, but teaching Defence isn't her normal job?"

"But if she was undercover, then using her real name would be a bad idea," Fred mused. "Unless it's because she's American, so nobody here would recognize her?"

"If she's really American," Harry added. "Or human? Maybe we should have remembered to look up in class, in case there was a griffin up there."

"Why a griffin?" Ron asked, perplexed.

"Dragons are Beauxbatons," Harry replied.

Everybody agreed that this was a good answer and that Ron should have seen it coming, except for Ron.

* * *

Some hours later, as they were going through the Midlands, both Fred and George had decided to go ahead and make a bit more space by shifting to their Animagus forms.

This time, it was the one who was calling himself Fred who was the mink and the one who the mink said was George who was the pine marten. (Identifying those had taken half an hour with a Muggle I-Spy book, but they were all quite confident that what they had was a mink and a pine marten.)

One of the initially unexpected benefits of being able to change shape like that was that Fred was now able to seriously contemplate eating a Pumpkin Pasty larger than his own torso.

Nobody was quite sure if he'd _succeed_, but it was fun to watch him try as the friends discussed some of the things that they were hoping would come up in next year's lessons – or, in Ginny's case, what she guessed might be an option for her in a bit more than a year.

The door slid open a crack as they talked, and a reddish-orange shape came slinking in. Looking around with bright, alert eyes, the fox jumped up onto a free seat and contemplated a leap up to the table – then spotted Fred, who'd stopped eating his pasty.

For a moment, the vulpine intruder looked uncertain, and then George landed on top of them.

There was a short, fuzzy scuffle, and then George blurred back into human form with the fox held gently but firmly in both hands.

"Aha!" he said proudly. "You're not the only ones who can play the long game!"

Tyler (or Anne) yipped something which Harry assumed was probably rude.

"Want to come around during the summer?" George added. "I think we'd get on like a house on fire."

"Please let that not be literal," Ginny asked plaintively.

* * *

They reached Kings Cross in the middle of the afternoon, and Harry waved goodbye to his friends before heading for the exit out into the Muggle station.

He _could_ have flown home, but it seemed only polite to at least look to see whether Uncle Vernon was waiting.

When he passed through the barrier, however, he noticed Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, but he also saw Sirius.

Surprisingly, Sirius was wearing clothes that looked a lot more like what Remus usually wore – slightly shabby and old – instead of the smart-casual that Sirius preferred in the Muggle world or the jeans-and-T-shirt that he usually wore in Grimmauld Place or his new house in Hogsmeade.

"Harry, there you are!" he said. "And these are your uncle and aunt?"

Harry nodded, and Uncle Vernon eyed Sirius suspiciously.

"Who's this, then?" he asked shortly. "Don't think I've seen you before. You're one of… them?"

"Of course!" Sirius agreed, smiling brightly. "Sirius Black's the name. You'd be Vernon, and this must be Petunia!"

Aunt Petunia nodded, very slightly.

"I remember Lily talked about you!" Sirius said, in tones of great delight. "You know, Lily was a friend of mine at school? Well, more of an _enemy_ of mine at school, but that's water under the bridge now – my best friend fell in love with her, you see."

"You're not a friend of that greasy boy, are you?" Petunia asked.

"Oh, no, no, not at all!" Sirius assured her. "Unlike my friend, _he's_ still alive. I haven't been around because of a little matter of multiple homicide and a prison sentence – Azkaban, if you've heard of it – but the good news is that I got let off on a technicality and I'm _very_ pleased to meet you!"

He shook both their hands. "Incidentally, where exactly do you live?"

"Come on, boy, we're leaving," Uncle Vernon said hastily. "And consider yourself _not_ invited!"

Harry tried not to laugh.

It _was_ kind of immature of Sirius to do that to his aunt and uncle, but on the other paw it was also kind of a good thing.

If Sirius could joke about what had happened, well… he was a lot better now. And _that_ put a smile on Harry's muzzle.

* * *

AN:

And that's two years done.

Neither Ron nor Ginny knows how to correctly pronounce (or decline) metamorphmagus.


	34. More Dragon, Less Summer

As summers went, the summer of 1993 was so far the sort of summer that made you want to send it back to the factory for reconditioning.

It had been nice and hot for the first few days, but then everything had sort of flopped and turned into what was more like spring weather than anything – not very wet or rainy, but with clouds and wind mixed together.

Harry didn't really mind, though. He'd had plenty of time to enjoy the summer with his friends up at Hogwarts before the holidays properly started, and the slightly-gloomy weather gave him plenty of time to work on his homework.

Fortunately, it wasn't much trouble. Uncle Vernon had tried demanding his magical things to lock them under the stairs, but Harry had (quite reasonably, he thought) pointed out that he had to stay at Privet Drive for a month every year, and if he wasn't able to use his own magical things to put the time to productive use doing homework then it only made sense to have a friend over to visit instead.

The idea of being visited by wizards made Uncle Vernon turn a funny colour (though lots of things made Uncle Vernon turn a funny colour) and no more had been said about locking his things away.

As a result, the eighth of July found Harry sitting at his table, looking between his Potions textbook and the notes he'd made about it.

It looked like Professor Snape had been sort of sneaky. One of the homework essays was about shrinking potions, but as far as Harry could tell the most important shrinking potion they would be making in the first five years of their time at Hogwarts was the Shrinking Solution – which was third year.

Based on the description, it was _much_ better than the other ones they'd been looking at so far like the Deflating Draught.

Harry made a few notes with a pencil on a piece of lined paper he'd got available, thinking of making the essay about how the Shrinking Solution was more sophisticated because it could even make things younger if that was what it took to let them shrink properly.

It seemed like he had everything he needed, and he was about to start writing when there was a faint banging sound.

"Boy!" Uncle Vernon called. "Your aunt wants you for the garden!"

"Coming, Uncle Vernon!" Harry called back, putting the stopper back in his inkwell.

Leaving the rest of his materials where they were, so he could go back to them when he was ready, Harry left his tent and closed the zipper.

Moving aside the heavy trunk over the access hatch, Harry lifted the hatch out of the way before jumping down and flaring his wings to absorb some of the momentum. Then he made his way downstairs, past the clutter Dudley hadn't bothered to bring all the way up to his bedroom or his spare bedroom, and nearly stepped on a cartridge for Dudley's Super Nintendo before pausing to put it to the side.

It had a picture of a fox in a jacket on the front, and some spaceships as well. It was neat what they were putting in games these days.

* * *

Out in the garden, Aunt Petunia barely gave Harry a glance.

"Water the flower bed," she told him. "Then cut the hedge, and be quick about it!"

"Yes, Aunt Petunia," Harry agreed, going to get the hose.

At least it wasn't too hot. If the weather was really hot, like it had been sort of promising to be before the summer had turned into a fizzle, then there'd be a hosepipe ban and he'd have to use watering cans.

"And then I'll want you cooking," Aunt Petunia added. "None of that _abnormal_ stuff you eat at that… that… _school_."

Harry nodded, thinking about what he should do.

Maybe some pasta. Pasta would be nice, and he could do it with a cheese sauce.

Humming what he thought the tune to _Moreta's Ride_ was to himself, Harry began watering the flowerbed.

His summers were a bit unusual, but he didn't really have any reason to complain about them.

* * *

Some hours later, after cooking a pasta bake (sized for eight, which had turned out to be a good guess) Harry went upstairs.

He was told to tidy Dudley's spare room, which Harry had once thought meant that Aunt Petunia was giving him a treat. He knew better now, but that didn't stop it being a treat anyway, and that was the important bit.

This time, the check for broken things meant that Harry found a few music CDs that Dudley had decided he didn't want any more. They were chipped or scratched, so they wouldn't play in a music player, and Harry checked what he was meant to do with them before bringing them with him when he went back to his tent.

Inside, Harry said good-evening to Hedwig and sat back down at the table, finally starting on his long-delayed Potions essay.

As he outlined the disadvantages and uses of the Deflating Draught, Harry picked up one of the CDs he'd salvaged from Dudley's room and took a bite. It crunched satisfyingly, with a basic taste of plastic but some little extra tingles as well, and he chewed his way through the crunchy bits as he wrote.

Taking another bite, Harry moved on to a bit of an outline of a tricky potion which had to be applied as a salve and which shrank only hairs. He wasn't sure if it quite counted as a shrinking potion, so he said it was the 'same sort of thing' which sounded like a good compromise.

His wrist was itching by the time he finished that bit, and Harry gave it a bit of a rub before deciding to make some hot chocolate.

Maybe he could dip one of the CDs in it. It probably wouldn't work, but if it did then he'd have invented a new treat for dragons – or for his type of dragon, at least.

One of the good things about being apparently unique was how often you got to say you'd invented a new food.

* * *

The next morning, Harry's whole foreleg was itching.

He knew what that had to mean, and sighed.

Molting had been annoying enough when he'd thought it was something all growing dragons went through. Now he knew that it was something that he was the only one to actually have to deal with, it was sort of _more_ annoying.

Rolling his neck, Harry gently inspected it with his talons – feeling for how far along the process had gone – then decided to take some notes about it.

The least he could do was to make sure that he had it written down, in case it turned out to be medically important or something.

* * *

After thinking about it a lot, Harry decided that the most sensible thing to do was going to be to just try and stay in his room until he was finished. His room was fortunately a lot bigger than it should have been, and he had plenty to eat, so he rubbed his itching brow ridges before heading downstairs to tell Aunt Petuina that he wasn't very well.

His aunt had sounded _slightly_ concerned about it, and Harry had decided to be a little bit sneaky and say that it was the sort of thing that his sort got and that he wasn't sure if he could pass it on to someone else.

It made him feel a bit bad about tricking Aunt Petunia into thinking Dudley might catch some non-specific wizard illness, but it got what he wanted – Aunt Petuna told him to stay in his room and to not come out until he was _sure_ he was well again.

Harry didn't mind that at all.

He'd only just got back to his tent, though, when Hedwig arrived with a letter. The neat writing on the front made him fairly sure it was from Hermione, and he opened it with a talon before unfolding the crisp white A4 paper to read.

It was quite a long letter, which seemed like just the thing to take Harry's mind off the itching running up and down his forelegs, and Harry paused to give Hedwig a treat before walking into his lounge room and rolling onto his back.

His tail snaked out to switch on the reading light, which gave him a good angle, and he began to read.

It seemed that Dobby had plucked up the courage – after Hermione had sent him a letter, and then talked to him – to petition to the Office for House-Elf Relocation.

Everybody there had been delighted to have something to do, by Hermione's account, and had taken all the evidence (like Dobby's testimony and his injuries) before issuing a writ that Dobby's owner would have to contest or give up his ownership of the House-Elf.

Hermione was quite annoyed by how they had to go through a legal procedure when, really, it should have been up to Dobby to say he wasn't happy where he was – after all, a wizard or witch could get rid of a House-Elf just by giving them clothes, so it wasn't like it was required that both sides agree or anything – but she was grateful there was something there at all, and she said that she'd read all the relevant laws and really Mr. Malfoy didn't have a leg to stand on.

(That made Harry smile, because he was sure that Dumbledore would have added that Mr. Malfoy had two legs to stand on – the usual pair, one on each side.)

After that, Hermione asked him about whether there was anything he wanted for his birthday. She admitted that his book collection was by now large enough that she wasn't sure of being able to guess at a book he didn't have, though she _did_ ask whether he could not get any _newly released_ books for the next few weeks so there was at least one way to tell if a book was a book he didn't have yet.

That sounded like a good idea to Harry, who wrote back to agree (and to say what he thought about things with Dobby) and then, reminded by Hermione's question, he dug around in the books he'd got in the first week of the summer holidays to see what there was he could read.

One book was called _Hunting Party_, which sounded like it might be interesting – Harry had got started with fantasy books, but it did seem like a lot of people who wrote fantasy also wrote science fiction so he'd sort of drifted into reading those as well.

* * *

For lunch, Harry had some soup (which heated up quite nicely with fire breath – a lot of things could be heated by fire breath, but things like soup had less chance of catching fire), following it up with the tin.

After that he still felt hungry, though, so he made himself a sandwich as well.

Then a second one.

At about that point, Harry realized that maybe part of molting was having a bigger appetite than normal. It seemed worth knowing, so he wrote that down as well before moving on to Charms homework.

It always seemed a bit strange that they had homework which was about how to cast magic – this one was about how you could recharge a spell that was sort of running out without either just replacing the spell completely or (worse) doubling the spell up, which might be dangerous with things like levitation charms – but you couldn't actually cast the spells, because it wasn't legal.

Maybe that was the problem Neville had? He did seem to get better over the year, but then so did everyone.

It took Harry longer than he'd hoped to finish the essay, distracted by the itches which were spreading over his whole body, and he had to admit he was at least relieved that his eyes didn't need to shed. Itchy eyes would have been even worse.

Harry very much liked being a dragon, but there were some things that were really inconvenient. (Though maybe humans had inconvenient things as well, like hair – Harry had never had to have a haircut, but everybody else got it sorted out _somehow_ at Hogwarts.)

* * *

The next morning, Harry stopped reading through his current novel.

He put a bookmark into it, turning it around to look at the back, then sighed.

Maybe it was _The Animals of Farthing Wood_, or maybe it was _Stig of the Dump_ but he'd never really liked fox hunts as a thing. They didn't seem to have them in Surrey, and Harry didn't think he'd have the courage to get involved if one was going on anyway, but they just didn't seem very nice.

He also didn't think there had to be a fox hunt in a science fiction book, especially not when they brought the foxes to that planet specially to be hunted. Maybe he'd go back to the book later, but right now that had sort of made him sour on the whole thing.

It didn't help that by now he itched _all over_, except for places like his talons and the membrane of his wings. It was pervasive and constant and it was probably making him a bit more short tempered than normal… maybe this was how young dragons felt on Pern if they didn't get taken care of properly?

Harry still had a bit more than half of his homework left, history essays and Transfiguration and some DADA work set by Sue D. Nym before she left – presumably on the grounds that if their next teacher was moderately skilled they'd be able to do something with it – and some Astronomy as well, mostly about the planet Mars. But he didn't feel like he'd be able to do any of it at the moment, because what he wanted more than anything else was to roll on his back and scratch until the itching stopped.

Instead, Harry grit his teeth and went back to his library, putting back the book he'd been reading and taking out the _Farthing Wood _books instead. He'd been reminded of them anyway, and maybe reading them again would take his mind of things.

As Harry understood how that worked, that would probably be okay as long as he didn't end up _thinking_ about how he was trying to take his mind off things. So he'd better hope that the books were as distracting as he remembered.

* * *

Harry didn't like being in a mood where he grumbled.

Some people seemed to quite like that sort of thing – certainly some of the people in Harry's books were – but Harry wasn't the sort to grumble, so it took a lot to make him grumble. And this all-over itching was definitely the sort of thing to make him grumble.

He was halfway into the Siege of White Deer Park, and the clock said it was at least nine in the evening, when he finally decided that it would be a good idea to try and get some sleep.

Just to make sure he didn't miss out on something, though, he quickly wrote a letter to Charlie Weasley asking if he knew any ways to stop a dragon from feeling itchy. Hedwig took it off into the night, not particularly bothered by the light rain Harry could hear faintly on the roof, and then the young dragon pushed his hoard around to make it a bit more comfortable and lay back on it.

Sleep was a long time coming.

* * *

When Harry's hide finally began to actually shed, it was a huge relief. The itching just went away, and the new dragonscale underneath was a bit soft and tender but there was so much less _pressure_ on it. And the old hide was still _dragonhide_, so it was tough and flexible and it held together so well that it came away in big sheets and lumps with only a few gaps – in fact, in some places Harry had to carefully score it with his talon to make sure it would detach at all.

If it wasn't for the fact that shed skin was because you were _growing_ and would be bigger than you used to be, Harry could have used the bits that had been on his forelegs as elbow-length gloves – though they wouldn't have covered his talons.

After two days of itching, Harry luxuriated in the sudden absence, and it gave him a burst of energy which took him through all of his Transfiguration homework over the course of the day. He wasn't sure quite what to _do_ with all the shed bits, eventually putting them in a cupboard, but that couldn't dampen down either his good cheer or his appetite.

Of course, he did get a reply from Charlie Weasley, suggesting that he ask Nora how she dealt with itches. Harry didn't have a Whomping Willow on hand, but it was a good reminder and something to think about next time.

Once he'd done his work, Harry took a nice long hot bath. It used up a lot of the water he had in the tank, but that was okay, and Harry heated the water to the point it wasn't far off boiling before dissolving some soap in it and giving himself a good wash all over.

Tired out by a night of itch-driven insomnia, Harry fell asleep in the bath with his wings slightly open to let the water reach into the folds.

* * *

When he woke up the next morning, Harry found that his scales had firmed up again. They were still a little more tender than normal, but nowhere near how they'd been before, and he felt hungry all over again.

He was also _about_ a foot longer than he'd been the previous morning, and he splashed out of the now-cold water to make sure by comparing how big his paws were and how high he could reach towards the ceiling by stretching his wings out.

It was… about a foot in length, though half of that was tail, and about the same in wingspan. His body barrel had definitely got wider as well, which made Harry wonder about whether he'd need to get more clothes, and checking with his gloves revealed that they definitely didn't fit.

Fortunately, despite what he'd been told happened to humans, his time in the bath hadn't made his fingers go all wrinkly. It would have been a real pity if they'd ended up staying like that until his next molt.

* * *

After towelling himself off, and letting the cold water drain away, Harry did his best to get back to a routine. It was a bit tricky, because he kept bumping into things, but that was the sort of thing he heard happened to human teenagers as well after growth spurts so it seemed fair.

There was a little pile of letters waiting for him, and that reminded Harry to send one off to Sirius and Remus. It was kind of likely that they'd be living in the same house, though not certain, and besides it was much easier for Hedwig to carry one letter than two.

Sweeping the chair aside – and nearly bouncing it off the wall – Harry crouched at the table and began writing.

He said how he'd gone through a moult, which was something he'd done before and was used to, and explained how he was now bigger and a bit clumsy as a result. He couldn't estimate how much heavier, because he didn't have any scales, but put everything else about how big he was now into the letter.

Putting it to the side for now, in case he thought of anything else, Harry picked up the top letter on the pile. It was from Ron, and Harry opened it with care before unfolding the parchment to read.

The first thing Ron did was to say that he was hiding in his room to write. It seemed that Fred and George had indeed invited the Smith twins around for a few weeks, and Mrs. Weasley hadn't really thought through what that would mean until it was too late.

There were a few ink blotches, which Ron explained were because every so often the house shook slightly as one of the four pranksters did 'something' (Ron wasn't able to be more specific because it was often quite different) and everyone was getting used to the sound of scrabbling claws going up and down the stairs as some or all of them ran away from a misfired experiment or Mrs. Weasley.

Or both.

Percy had politely said that he'd be sleeping on the roof from now on, which struck Harry as quite a good idea given the situation.

Ron also said that Fred and George hadn't even bothered to hide their Animagus forms any more, and that his mum was kind of pleased by how they could do it (even if it sounded like she wished that they could put their energies into something more fulfilling).

Then there was a little postscript by Ginny, who explained that because Ron had given the letter to her to attach to her owl she thought she'd give a bit of an update herself. Apparently Ron and Ginny had taken to fleeing to Luna Lovegood's house when they had actual homework to do, because it meant they were away from the madness happening at home.

They'd met Tanisis' parents, who were 'kind of terrifying, but nice', and who got on very well indeed with Luna's somewhat unusual father, Xenophilius Lovegood (who Harry remembered ran the Quibbler). Ron had also mentioned the Muggle moon landing to Mr. Lovegood, but Ginny mostly mentioned that to say how confused Ron had looked when Mr. Lovegood had earnestly told him that it had been all a fake and the _actual_ landings had been on Mars.

It gave Harry a smile, and he put it carefully to the side before moving on to Hermione's letter.

Unlike the Weasley letter, Hermione's one was just about all business. It seemed that she was following what was happening with Dobby very closely indeed, and they were involved in 'lots of discoveries and interrogatories' – apparently Mr. Malfoy's main argument was that Dobby was doing those injuries to himself, so Mr. Malfoy couldn't be blamed, while the woman in charge of Dobby's case was focusing on whether Dobby had ever been _told_ to punish himself and whether he'd had a reasonable belief that he _had_ to.

It all sounded very complicated to Harry, but Hermione seemed enthusiastic about it and he was glad to leave it in her hands.

Then there was a letter from Dean, and Harry was about to open it when he remembered something and dashed off back to his library.

* * *

Five minutes rummaging around in his things, and Harry had found what he was after. Giving the little hand mirror a rub, he sat down at the table and waited, and a minute or so later his reflection changed into Sirius'.

"_Harry!"_ Sirius said brightly. _"Great to see you! How are you?"_

"I've been moulting," Harry said, by way of summary. "It was kind of a pain, but it's over now."

"_Huh, I've had to deal with shedding, but that's not the same thing,"_ Sirius mused. _"What's that like?"_

"Itchy," Harry told him. "For about two days, all over… then when I actually shed, I grew a foot overnight."

"_So you're a five legged dragon now?"_ Sirius asked, tilting his head in a very canine way, and Harry snorted. Sirius smiled broadly at Harry's reaction, seeming very pleased with himself for managing the joke.

"_Jokes aside, Harry, that's quite a growth spurt,"_ Sirius went on. _"I've got no idea how to deal with it, but if you don't know either then you can always let me know. Then we can be confused together."_

"I thought you said jokes aside?" Harry asked, tail flicking happily from side to side. "Maybe it's too much to ask to expect no jokes when you're being Sirius."

"_Hey, which of the two of us has serious experience with being too hairy?"_ Sirius replied. _"You've only ever been one Harry."_

He snapped his fingers together. _"Oh, that reminds me, I've got some relatives who aren't in Azkaban, aren't unpleasant, _and_ aren't disowned! You'll have to meet them when you're next able to come around."_

Harry nodded his interest, and Sirius looked a bit shifty. _"Mind you, I had to _remember_ to undisown them. Own them? Not sure how you phrase that. Anyway, how are things with your relatives?"_

"Not bad, really," Harry answered. "I've been upstairs since I started to moult, but before then it was okay..."

* * *

It was almost lunch when Sirius finally and regretfully announced he'd have to go.

Harry was fine with that – he'd forgotten just how nice it was to be able to talk to someone, but Sirius had his own life to live – and he still had a letter from Dean to read, so he retrieved that from where he'd left it before opening it with a talon.

As he read it, he had to smile a little.

Some of Dean's letter was grumbles about how hard it was to do the homework when he had to deal with sisters, or when there wasn't anyone else around he could really talk to about the magic side of things – his mum and dad were supportive, but neither of them could really tell you much about witch burning or the Noctis Labyrinth – but most of it was about a quite different subject.

Football.

Dean's beloved West Ham had – somewhat to his surprise – been promoted up into the new Premier League over the course of the previous season, so he was newly optimistic about how the 'Irons' would do.

(Harry didn't know why West Ham were the Irons. Some teams it was obvious, like how Millwall were the Lions because they had a lion on their badge or Arsenal were the Gunners because you kept guns in an arsenal, but he couldn't tell why a place name like West Ham turned into a name like 'Irons.')

Dean also said a few things about the transfers, and Harry didn't really follow them but he was sure that Dean was interested. Now Harry thought about it, though, transfers didn't happen all _that_ much in Quidditch, or at least he'd never heard of it.

Wizard sports were weird. But then again, so were other sports.

* * *

Though he was now leaving his tent again to do things like help his relatives cook and go to the library, Harry still spent most of his time working on the rest of his homework.

Neville sent him a letter about how he'd had an argument with his great-uncle Algie, who'd said something about how Neville had better buck up his ideas and get good at _casting_ spells, and Neville had replied by saying that he didn't think Great-Uncle Algie was one of those wizards who didn't like Muggles, and then there'd been a lot of shouting.

Harry felt really quite sorry for him, and wrote back a letter to say so, but tried to also say that a single argument shouldn't be a problem if the relative in question genuinely did like him. That it was good to reach out a bit, but Neville shouldn't feel like he had to do _all_ the work in patching things up between them.

It was kind of a tricky idea to get across, but that was partly because Harry wasn't quite sure of it himself.

* * *

A few days before Harry's birthday, a letter and a parcel arrived from Hermione.

The parcel had a label on it that told Harry not to open it until he was thirteen, and Harry put that to the side before opening the letter to see if there was something he could read there while he was still twelve.

Fortunately, there was, because Hermione was _very_ happy indeed. The first thing she'd written was that Dobby had been successful, and underlined it twice, and how he'd been very brave and managed to stand up to Mr. Malfoy even when Mr. Malfoy was being all intimidating.

Harry hadn't realized Hermione was there _at_ the hearing, but it sort of made sense with how interested she was.

So now Dobby could go out into the world and find what he wanted to do, hopefully with a nicer family, or even do something himself.

Harry had barely finished reading that letter when Pigwigeon arrived, landing with a splash in Harry's orange juice and making enthusiastic owl noises at him. The letter tied to the little owl's leg was fortunately unsullied by orange juice, so Harry untied it before fishing him out and giving him a quick wash and dry.

That done, and with Pigwigeon given half-a-dozen owl treats, Harry opened the letter.

Ron was mostly asking whether this was something he or Hermione had planned deliberately. Harry wasn't sure what he meant at first, until he saw the postscript by Ginny that explained how the Weasleys had woken up to find themselves with a new volunteer House-Elf.

Mrs. Weasley had already started making him a Weasley Jumper, because he wasn't actually _theirs_ so much as _staying with them_ and so clothes wouldn't really do anything.

Harry had to admit that that sounded really quite nice, and he was happy that Dobby had found some people who would look after him.

* * *

On the twenty-ninth of July, which was a Thursday, Harry was in the middle of cooking some steak and mash for dinner when Uncle Vernon got back from work.

"How was the day, dear?" Aunt Petunia asked.

"It went very well, Pet," Uncle Vernon replied, sounding satisfied with himself. "Someone came calling to ask about our drills, seemed very interested – nothing signed yet, but I think we could be making quite a big sale. I took him out for lunch, he seemed very interested."

"Oh, well, I hope you didn't spoil your appetite," Aunt Petunia replied.

"No fear, Pet," Uncle Vernon told her. "I told him the joke about the Japanese golfer, you know the one."

Harry had never actually _heard_ the Japanese golfer joke, and he wondered what it was. He didn't let it distract him from his cooking, though, and he started mashing the potatoes with one paw while keeping an eye on the steak.

"Funny name, though," Uncle Vernon added. "Not heard of anyone with a name like Regulus Arcturus before. Still, his money's the same colour as anyone's."

It took Harry a moment to realize what had probably happened, and then he had to hold in a snigger.

It just went to show that Uncle Vernon really did base almost everything about how he thought about someone on things like how they were dressed.

* * *

Twenty minutes or so later, as they were eating, Uncle Vernon cleared his throat.

"I was on the phone to Marge earlier," he announced. "She's got to bring her dog with her, her usual sitter has the 'flu."

"Aunt Marge?" Harry asked. "Is she coming here?"

"She is," Uncle Vernon confirmed. "And while I'm at it, there's a few things I want to get straight before she arrives on Saturday."

He nodded at Harry. "We've been telling her that you go to St. Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys. She doesn't know about any of your weirdness."

Harry twitched his wings, thinking about how much of his weirdness Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't know about, then frowned.

"Why would you tell her that?" he asked.

"We've got to tell her something," Uncle Vernon barked. "You're away most of the year, we can't say you're going to the local comprehensive, can we, boy?"

"Well… I would have thought that if there was a place like that, it wouldn't let kids out for summer holidays," Harry explained. "You could have just said that I was going to a cheap school in Scotland on a Government grant because that way you didn't have to deal with me."

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon exchanged glances.

"And I was going to be staying with someone else for half the holidays anyway," Harry added. "I could just leave in the morning of my birthday? That way you wouldn't have to deal with me, and nor would Aunt Marge."

That provoked a lot of grumbling, but eventually Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon agreed that maybe that would make a lot more sense.

* * *

One of the less odd (but still odd) things about Harry's life as it now was was that – despite how the thirtieth of July was his last full day at Privet Drive for the year – he didn't have any packing to do.

All of his things were in his tent, pre-packed simply because that was where he kept them, and he'd finally got the last of his homework finished. Harry _did_ have to make sure the spare bedroom was clean, so he spent an hour or so doing that (and then another half hour with the vacuum cleaner up in the loft making sure his tent was tidy) but after that there just… wasn't really anything left to do.

Fortunately, Harry knew just what to do in that sort of situation, and he spent most of the afternoon scribbling out notes on pieces of paper about what he'd do if he was going to do a proper Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

With so many fantasy books under his belt, there were a lot of places he could base it on, but there was this idea that he kept coming back to. It would _start_ with the _Lord of the Rings_, or to be more exact the _Silmarillion_, but changing things so the dragons had revolted during the war against Morgoth and the werewolves – that is, the werewolves Morgoth had created, who were more like the Forbidden Forest Wargs – had done the same.

That would mean that Numenor was still above the water, and there were a lot of Elves still around, and that there were good dragons and good wolves as well. There could still be monsters to be faced and orcs to fight so there was something for the heroes to do, but it would be a lot more of a situation where they could take their time.

Plus, it would mean the map was already mostly done. He'd just need to make sure there was a Numenor off the coast, and somewhere where dragons lived.

Maybe there should be Gandalf as well. Harry wasn't sure if Gandalf _would_ be there if what he was thinking of had happened, but he could just decide for himself that the answer was yes.

Hopefully there'd be people interested. He did feel vaguely guilty about taking so long to use his present from last year, and he hoped that Neville found the present Harry had got him a bit more useful than that.

Admittedly, it was _sort_ of a boring present if you thought about it one way, but the way Harry preferred to think of it was that Neville didn't have a watch and it would probably help him out if he had one.

He'd made sure to get one with an alarm, because he'd heard that one of the things teenagers had trouble with was getting up at the right time. Harry didn't know yet if that applied to teenage _dragons_, but Neville was human so he was much more sure about that.

* * *

AN:

Bit of a delay for this pair of chapters, thanks largely to a frankly ridiculous cold.

Anyway. Harry's now bigger, and his main problem with the St. Brutus's plan is just that it's a bit silly – he doesn't mind the idea of a cover story, but it could at least be a consistent one.


	35. Teen Dragon

Bright and early on the morning of the 31st of July, Harry woke up and realized he was now thirteen.

It didn't feel much different from being twelve, really, but Harry hadn't really expected anything different.

The most important thing he had to do that day was to fly to Grimmauld Place to join Sirius, and possibly Remus as well depending on how things went, but when he went into the kitchen to have breakfast Hedwig barked at him.

"Good morning, girl," Harry smiled, yawning slightly. "Funny to think it's been two years, isn't it?"

Hedwig bobbed her head slightly, which Harry understood to be quite a difficult thing for an owl to do, and pointed with her wing at the table. That led Harry to notice a thick Hogwarts envelope, neatly in front of one of the seats and addressed to him.

Opening it, Harry found that there were more sheets than normal. The usual train ticket and book list were there, but so was a letter from Professor McGonagall about visiting Hogsmeade and a permissions slip that was to be signed by a parent and a guardian to let him do so.

Harry decided that Sirius would _probably_ count, because technically Sirius _lived_ in Hogsmeade some of the time, and that he could always send a letter to Professor McGonagall to make sure.

The book list was about as long as it had been in the previous years. First year he'd had to get books for every subject, and second year there'd been all of Mr. Lockhart's books, but for third year Harry had books to get for Arithmancy, Ancient Runes and Care of Magical Creatures as well as the Grade Three book of spells and some more advanced theory books.

That meant two books on Arithmantic equations, one about Ancient Runes (_Futhark And Thou_, by Kylver Stone) and _The Atlas of Beasts and Creatures_ – apparently written by one Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, which was one of those wizarding names that made Harry stare at it looking for the pun.

Eventually deciding there wasn't one, Harry rummaged around for a bit in his hoard to get his equipment list from first year. He still had all the books from that, obviously, but it looked like he'd need to get some of the other things on there again.

That sorted out, Harry let Hedwig out of the door before taking down his tent. It took about ten minutes to fully dismantle, fitting into the carry bag which went into his backpack, and before eight in the morning Harry was ready to set off.

"Shall we, girl?" he asked, brightly.

Hedwig agreed, spreading her wings, and Harry gave her a short letter he'd written to Sirius the night before.

He wasn't entirely sure where Grimmauld Place _was_ yet, but Hedwig would know. She hopped to the window, swooping out into the cool Surrey morning.

Harry followed, stopping for long enough to shut the window behind him, then took off and followed Hedwig.

Almost immediately, he remembered that he hadn't actually done much flying with his newly-grown wings just yet.

* * *

Harry's post-molt body and wings were all differently sized and weighted to how they'd been last week. His wings were bigger, which meant he could move more air at once, but also meant there was more resistance to moving them (so he had to work harder to bring them down) while the rest of his body was longer and a bit heavier – the aerodynamics were all different.

He came close to hitting a nearby chimney as he tried to climb, wobbled a bit, and actually _did_ hit one of the trees around the edge of the local green. Twigs and leaves went everywhere, a few birds scattered out of their perches, and Harry shook his head a little to clear it before carefully making sure his glasses were still in place.

When he'd disentangled himself from what he thought was probably a horse chestnut, Hedwig was orbiting the tree he'd hit on whisper-silent wings.

Smiling a quick thanks to her for not going on ahead and leaving him to get lost, Harry jumped down to land on the green proper with a flap of his wings. Leaving them open, he moved back and forth a little to get a feel for the wind.

There wasn't much of it, but it felt like this _should_ work.

Harry took off again, this time tilting back and powering almost straight upwards, and kept rising until he was high enough that all the houses were little boxes and he could see over the nearest of the South Downs.

That seemed like it was high enough that he wouldn't bump into anything (so long as he kept his eyes peeled for aeroplanes if they went close to Heathrow or Gatwick) and Harry held out his wings in a stiff glide until Hedwig flew up to join him.

"Sorry, girl," he said. "I didn't want to bump into everything from here to Sirius' house."

Hedwig _preck_ed at him, flying close enough to brush his snout with the feathers on one wing, then turned and began to fly northeast towards London.

Harry followed, adjusting his flight slightly to try and get used to it again.

* * *

Thirty minutes or so later, Harry had gone through two unplanned aerial somersaults and one brief tailspin, but he was doing much better, and when Hedwig began spiralling downwards he was able to follow without much fear of accidentally ploughing straight into the ground.

It was the sort of thing that even human Seekers apparently did, but it would probably sting. And do damage to the garden of whoever he hit.

A little after Harry was low enough to pick out individual people, he realized which of the streets was Grimmauld Place. That let him plan ahead better, and after a pause to fix the local landmarks in his mind he flew around in a wide-ranging approach circuit.

Harry swooped down the street a little above the level of the parked cars, then flared all of a sudden and landed with a skitter of claws on the pavement.

Hedwig vanished into an open window a little way up the street, and Harry loped over to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

* * *

The inside of Number Twelve was completely different to how it had been the previous time Harry had visited.

Back then it had been a definite work in progress, little puddles of cleared-out space with a decade of clutter and as much as a century of Dark artefacts and Dark magic filling the rest of the house. Sirius had made it as cheerful as he could, but it had still been obvious.

Now it was bright and airy, the curtains drawn back and replaced with filmy net curtains that let through almost all of the light, and the carpets were scrubbed. (The one in the front room turned out to be mauve, which was quite a surprise.)

There was no sign of the portrait of the old Mrs. Black, either, which was good – Harry hadn't wanted to be called a featherless chicken or whatever insult she'd come up with this time – and some lovely art of things like stags and wolves and dragons graced the walls instead, probably mostly Muggle because they didn't move.

"I like it," Harry said, walking around in a circle, and Sirius lit up.

"You hear that, Kreacher?" he asked. "He likes it!"

"The polite dragon is just being polite," Kreacher replied, walking in from the kitchen with a glass he was drying. "Because polite dragons are polite, dogmaster. That is what the word polite means."

"This isn't about the wallpaper, is it?" Sirius asked, sighing. "I let you pick for the first floor."

"Wallpaper is important!" Kreacher insisted.

Sirius shook his head, giving Harry a hangdog look. "See what I have to put up with?"

"Do you have any idea how many times _we_ said that in Hogwarts?" Remus asked, getting up out of an armchair.

He smiled. "It's good to see you, Harry. And you weren't joking when you said you'd had a growth spurt!"

"Yeah, I think I'm going to need to get a new one of everything," Harry agreed. "At least it's all at once?"

"That probably _is_ a good thing," Sirius mused. "Your dad went through a phase where he was growing just enough that he needed new clothes every term."

He paused. "Though that _might_ have been because I was casting shrinking charms on them so they got smaller very slowly indeed."

"It sounds like that might be part of it," Harry agreed. "Though – actually, I know clothes work with the Animagus transformation. But can you untransform wearing different clothes?"

"I don't _think_ so," Sirius said, paused, then turned into Padfoot.

He turned back into Sirius again a moment later, inspected his clothes, and shook his head. "Nope. Worth a try, though."

"Lucky you," Remus chuckled. "I have to buy clothes in bulk. Or remember to Transfigure something that I don't mind losing, even if I only end up as Moony for about five minutes."

"What would happen if _you_ did the Animagus ritual?" Harry said, suddenly curious. "Would you end up as a wolf animagus as well as a werewolf?"

"Good question!" Sirius announced. "Kreacher, take a note please!"

Kreacher got a notepad and a pencil from behind his ear (which Harry supposed made sense, because House-Elf ears were big and you could fit a lot behind them) and duly made the requested note.

"Anyway!" Sirius added. "It _is_ your birthday, Harry, and we've got a surprise for you!"

Mindful of what two Marauders might mean by 'surprise', Harry wondered if he should protect himself with his wings or something.

"Sirius and I were talking to Ted Tonks," Remus added. "And we realized there's something that neither I nor Sirius have done, and you probably haven't done either."

He picked up an envelope off the nearby table. "Which is why, for your birthday, we're taking you to the cinema."

* * *

Going to the cinema was a strange experience.

It wasn't the first time Harry had seen a movie. Harry had seen bits of them at Privet Drive, and then all three of the Star Wars films at once a year ago, but that had been in a living room when the only other people around were family and friends and Dudley in particular was quite loud during the movies he found interesting or boring or exciting.

Here, though, the three of them got some popcorn and went into a darkened room full of seats – finding the seats which matched up to the seat numbers on their tickets – and sat down, or Sirius and Remus sat down while Harry found it easier to lie on the floor with his head held up to about the same level as those of his Dogfather and Lycanthruncle.

When the film started, it was definitely different from watching something in a living room. The screen was so much bigger that it felt… more like the difference between watching something on a television and actually being there, really, only not as much, while the sound was definitely louder.

Someone told Sirius off for being too loud during the bit before the film itself where they showed other films that were going to come out soon, which made Harry decide to be as quiet as possible while he watched.

It turned out that that… wasn't really possible. Not because Harry forgot, but because the film was a comedy.

Harry was _sort_ of familiar with the story of Robin Hood, but it felt like he wasn't really getting a lot of the jokes in _this_ version of Robin Hood. That was okay, though, because there were so many jokes so close together that he kept being startled into one laugh after another.

It was probably okay to laugh if everyone else was as well, though.

* * *

"I don't know what I expected, but… that really wasn't it," Sirius admitted, as they came out of the cinema. "It was better, though."

"I think I've been missing something all this time," Remus agreed. "I heard you laughing, Harry – I think that means you liked it?"

Harry nodded, sniggering. "The bit where they got out the movie script to check, that was hilarious!"

He shrugged. "It's a pity they didn't show Little John's family, though."

"Why's that?" Remus asked.

"Everyone knows Little John was raised by dragons," Harry explained. "It's in _Dragon Boy_. His pet wolf seemed to have gone missing as well."

"I… _think_ those bits aren't in the original Robin Hood story," Remus frowned. "Sirius, do you remember those bits in the original Robin Hood story?"

"Well, the version _I_ remember Lily told me about was the version where Robin Hood was a fox," Sirius said. "That's all second-hand, though."

"I wonder if the Smith Twins know about that one," Harry said to himself.

"Well, we should get home," Sirius suggested. "I don't know about you, but I'm interested to see what everyone got you for your birthday!"

He shrugged. "It's kind of a pity that the Tonks can't be here today, but Ted said they'd come around tomorrow."

Harry nodded.

"Want me to fly home?" he offered. "You could Apparate and I'll meet you there."

"That's sweet of you, but we'll stay with you," Sirius decided. "It's not _that_ far to walk."

He shrugged. "Besides, I'm still trying to be more Muggle."

"Was that you who Uncle Vernon had lunch with a couple of days ago?" Harry asked, and got a nod.

"Do I want to know?" Remus said, rubbing his temples.

"Probably not, Moony," Sirius replied, sounding like he was barely restraining a cackle.

"I don't know, I _think_ you're supposed to tell me at this point," Remus countered. "Shall we check the script?"

Harry giggled.

* * *

It rained on the way back to Grimmauld Place, and Harry used both his wings to act as umbrellas for Sirius and Remus.

He sort of wondered what it would look like to anyone who couldn't see that he was a dragon, though not really enough to accost someone and ask.

"I am a bit surprised you didn't open your presents before we left," Sirius said, as he unlocked the door. "I know we ate out, so you didn't have all _that_ long before we left, but you didn't have to put on clothes to go out or anything."

Harry's reply was a shrug, and Sirius yelped as Harry's still-wet wings sprayed him with water. "Oops, sorry… I don't know, really. Maybe it's a dragon thing."

"A dragon thing?" Remus repeated. "How do you mean, a dragon thing?"

"Well, I get possessive over things," Harry explained. "But presents are _already_ mine, whether I know what they are or not."

"That's quite different to Sirius," Remus agreed. "You know I caught him sneaking downstairs to open my birthday presents early, just to see what they were?"

"At Hogwarts?" Harry asked. "Wouldn't your presents have been all over the place? Or in your dorm room but with other people?"

"I didn't say it was at Hogwarts," Remus replied. "That happened last May."

"I was curious," Sirius said, a whine in his voice as they entered the front hall.

"Padfoot, you _got_ me most of those presents," Remus countered. "How could you possibly not have known?"

"In my defence," Sirius replied, loftily. "I am a bit thick."

"Fair enough, no further questions," Remus agreed immediately.

* * *

As it transpired, Hermione hadn't just got him a book. There was a book in there – _The Last Command_, the third of the Star Wars books that were about Luke and Han and Leia and Mara Jade and Grand Admiral Thrawn – but Hermione had also included an apology if he already had that and a book token for just in case.

Harry wondered if it would be okay to get himself a book with the book token, duplicate it, and then give a copy of the book to Hermione. That way it was sort of like the book token had been shared between them.

Neville's gift was much weightier, and when he tore off the wrapping paper Harry grinned in delight.

"What's that, then?" Sirius asked. "Oh, is it one of those books you can hide things in?"

"No, it's a book about how _The Lord of the Rings_ was written," Harry replied. "It's really convenient, actually."

"Oh, that book with the Horcrux in it," Sirius realized. "Neat."

Harry put _The History of the Lord of the Rings_ to the side, absently chewing on some of the wrapping paper, and turned to a gift which had no name tag and silver-gold wrapping paper.

It turned out to contain a pair of big fuzzy slippers, made to look like the overlarge scaly feet of some generic monster, and considerably bigger than Harry's feet currently were.

Harry assumed that was probably from Dumbledore, though he wasn't going to rule out Fred and Fred Weasley.

* * *

The next gift was something Sirius and Remus had worked on together. It looked at first sort of like a dust cover for a book, and he looked at it a bit oddly until Remus demonstrated.

What you did was to put the big dust cover around one book, and then touch the spine of the result to the spine of a second book. The book you'd wrapped in the cover then changed shape and appearance, merging with the dust cover so that from the outside it was a duplicate of the second book, while still containing the contents of the first book.

Harry was duly impressed with a way to carry a big book around in a small form, and said so. Sirius assured him that it was no trouble at all, it had been fun to make, and that he _could_ use it to disguise a novel as a textbook if that was what he was into.

Remus joked that the only way he'd kept Sirius focused was by coming up with a Marauder use for it. (Sirius promptly agreed, and christened it the Chameleon Cover because you had to have an alliterative name unless there was no alternative.)

The present from Ron (which had arrived via Percy's owl Hermes) turned out to actually be a present from the whole Weasley family according to the letter with it. It was nice to know they were all thinking of him, and along with a dozen well-wishes from Weasleys (Fred and George each gave two, and Dobby was on the list as well) there was a rather nice-looking if old fashioned camera.

Mr. Weasley was kind enough to explain how you had to develop the photos to make it so the pictures would move, and Harry was already thinking of places he could take the camera to get good pictures as he set it aside.

Dean's present was the last one Harry opened, which was a box with four Subbuteo figures in it.

Dean's accompanying letter apologized to Harry for having sort of picked something out last minute, and that he hoped Harry didn't mind much.

Harry didn't really know how to play Subbuteo in the first place – he knew what it was, because he'd read about it in books a few times, but it hadn't really been the sort of thing he'd been interested in.

Sirius was interested as well, musing about how the board game they'd played last Christmas was one which only recreated one specific Quidditch match while the Muggle game could do _any _football match.

After a few minutes of that discussion, Harry carefully put his presents together on the table so they wouldn't be forgotten.

He didn't want to interrupt the conversation, though, because the thing that was really nice about a birthday was just being able to spend it being _happy_.

What was the point of not doing something you enjoyed, if the reason you were stopping was anything to do with a birthday?

* * *

After a month at Privet Weyr, it was nice to be able to talk about magic again. Not so much being with people who knew that magic existed, because Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia _did_ know that magic existed, but being able to talk about things like Hogwarts without knowing that the person he was talking to was going to do their best to ignore it.

Sirius hadn't heard yet that Mr. Malfoy had lost his house-elf, and he was very amused by the whole thing – and pleased to hear how well the little fellow was settling in at Ron's house, as well.

He also thought for about ten seconds before suggesting that good Marauder names for Fred and George would be Trouble and Strife, though he didn't say which should be which.

Remus had good news as well, which was that he and Sirius had passed on the Homorphus Charm to werewolf support groups in France, Germany and America. It still meant that a non-werewolf had to be around to cast the spell, and it wasn't safe yet without Wolfsbane, but they were doing all sorts of tests to try and iron out any of the remaining problems with making werewolves into people who had a problem for a few minutes once a month (instead of for a whole night once a month).

Even if Lockhart had been a fraud, he _had_ at least had a positive impact in that way, which was a funny thing to think about.

* * *

"...wait, hold on a moment," Sirius requested, as they were halfway through Harry explaining how magic worked in the _Belgariad_ books.

"Yeah, anyone who has enough skill and power can turn into any animal," Harry agreed. "Most people get used to just one or two shapes, though."

"No, it's something else," Sirius explained. "Did your aunt say something about a greasy boy?"

"When did you meet Harry's aunt?" Remus asked. "I don't remember you going over to their house."

"No, this was when I met Harry at the station," Sirius clarified. "You know, when I borrowed your old clothes?"

"That was weeks ago," Remus blinked, before counting under his breath. "Yes, almost exactly a month ago."

"I remember it, yeah," Harry volunteered.

"Well, that's that mystery out of the way," Sirius decided. "Always wondered how – um, how _Severus_ got to know Lily. I always thought they met on the train."

"You never thought to ask?" Remus blinked. "You wondered about something for over twenty years and you never thought to ask?"

Sirius shrugged. "I think we've already gone over how I'm a bit thick sometimes."

"That's kind of interesting," Harry volunteered. "I might ask Professor Snape about it, but I'll have to pick a time when he's not very busy or not very annoyed."

"Well, good luck to you," Sirius decided. "Anyway… oh, speaking of that sort of thing, I think it should be possible for you and Remus to go and do some of that special practice Dumbledore was talking about. It probably won't be for a couple of weeks, I just thought you should know it'll be this August."

Harry nodded, taking that in. "Is that because you got special permission? I know we can't normally do magic outside Hogwarts."

"Special permission is one way to put it," Sirius agreed, sounding deeply amused by something.

* * *

That Sunday, Harry woke up a bit later than he had on his birthday.

He'd talked until quite late with Sirius and Remus, and with Kreacher when the House-Elf could be persuaded to take part (which had told Harry that Kreacher didn't approve of Dobby's life choices, though he'd also grudgingly said that Mr. Malfoy wasn't very pleasant to Dobby either), which was part of it – though another part of it was using the Chameleon Cover to read a bigger book lying in bed than he'd normally be able to.

It was a really versatile present.

Most of the morning was taken up with exploring Grimmauld Place (which Sirius wanted to come up with a different unofficial name for, though his best guess so far was Happy New House to be the opposite of Grim Old Place and Harry and Remus had agreed that wasn't very good) and seeing how everything had been cleaned up and redecorated.

Sirius' room was a mess, though Kreacher said _quite_ firmly that that was because Dog Master preferred it that way and didn't know where everything was if it had been tidied up.

Harry could sort of sympathize with both of them, because he preferred a pile of things on the floor as well (even if he did keep most of his books on shelves) but that was something he only really did for his bed itself, and when Dudley left his things all over the place it was often Harry's job to clear them up.

The oddest thing was how Regulus Black's room had been given to Kreacher, though, who'd proceeded to make absolutely no changes to how it looked.

Given that it was a bit of a mess as well, just as Regulus had left it, it seemed a bit hypocritical of Kreacher (at least, as far as Harry was concerned).

That was probably okay, though.

* * *

Sirius' cousin and her family turned up via the Floo halfway through lunch.

"Siri!" Andromeda Tonks called, not stumbling at all as she exited the fireplace. "Oh, and this is Harry Potter, I see – it's nice to meet you at last!"

"It's nice to meet you as well," Harry replied, getting up from his chair (which took a bit of shifting about, as he'd tried threading his tail through the back) and shook first her hand and then that of her husband. "I think Sirius said you were a therapist?"

"A healer in general," Andromeda clarified. "Witches who do healing don't have to specialize as much as Muggles do, because we have spells to make things easier. But yes, I've got some experience in therapy and mind healing – Ted's the one who's really good at fixing breaks and scrapes."

"Hope you enjoyed the film yesterday," Mr. Tonks added. "What did you think?"

"I wasn't really sure I got all the jokes," Harry admitted.

Mr. Tonks blinked. "Jokes? I thought the jokes were quite simple."

"I didn't really understand the one about the Patriot Arrow," Harry replied.

"Oh, I _see_," Mr. Tonks realized. "No, what happened there was that Sirius didn't take you to see the film I suggested. I would have thought the one about dinosaurs was a better choice."

He shrugged. "But, you know. I only met Sirius Black last November and already I know he's a law unto himself."

Harry quite liked Mr. Tonks. He was quite a bit older than Sirius and Remus, and he seemed quite laid-back as well.

"I'm not sure if you know Dora," Mr. Tonks added, sweeping his hand behind him to indicate his daughter.

Dora – Harry sort of remembered that her full first name was Nymphadora, but Sirius had said she didn't like it – gave Harry a brisk nod. Her hair was quite eye-catching, a sort of brilliant green Harry had only seen before on a high-visibility vest, and the young dragon had never seen a witch wearing a denim jacket before either.

"She's been going through Auror training," Mr. Tonks said proudly. "She's still got a way to go, but she did _very _well on her concealment and disguise portions."

Dora laughed. "Yeah, you could say that. I'm kind of tempted to ask Harry for a review."

She shook Harry's paw as well. "What did you think?"

Harry frowned, not sure what she meant, then tilted his head and sniffed.

There was something familiar…

"Oh!" he realized. "So you're Sue D. Nym?"

"Yep!" Dora agreed, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I was hoping someone would work that out, but also kind of not? Bit on the nose, but it meant I passed, and I got to help teach people Defence too."

"How did you do that?" Harry asked. "You look really different, but you smell sort of the same."

"Huh, smell?" Dora mused, mostly to herself. "Might need to look into that, maybe I should try perfume… anyway, I'm a Metamorphmagus. Watch this!"

Her hair went blue, then yellow, then a bright bubblegum pink before cycling back to fluorescent green.

Harry certainly thought it was neat, and said so.

"It's one of those powers which just shows up every so often," Mr. Tonks said, smiling at his daughter. "You have to work at it to make it as flexible as Dora is, though."

"Dad," Dora protested, sounding amused. "Don't make jokes about flexible!"

"Oh, no, I didn't even see that one," Mr. Tonks groaned.

Harry wasn't sure what was so bad about the flexible thing.

* * *

Kreacher put together some extra lunch for the Tonkses, and that sort of turned into the main meal of the day with everyone taking snacky foods and sitting around talking.

Remus was interested in how it had been clearing up the mess that Mr. Lockhart had left of the curriculum, and Dora seemed quite happy to discuss it – which was good, because it was very interesting to think about teaching from the teacher's side of things.

Mr. Tonks spent most of the time talking to Sirius about films and other Muggle things – it sounded like he'd stayed in touch with a lot of Muggle things after leaving Hogwarts – and was delighted to hear that Sirius had enjoyed the Asterix books, while Sirius not-so-subtly asked what Andromeda would like if she had the chance to buy something without any worry about price.

Apart from when he was listening to that sort of thing, Harry mostly ended up talking to Mrs. Tonks. She was full of questions and advice about his OWL years (or at least third to fifth years, which Harry supposed you could call the OWL years because you did the same subjects for all three years).

In particular, she said that the key to Defence was to just pick up the good bits from each teacher and pay attention to the textbooks – including the ones from previous years if you could.

It was good advice, and Harry took a moment to write it down just in case.

* * *

August, as it turned out, was a lot sunnier than July that year. It wasn't much _warmer_, but it was better than nothing.

One of the first things they did was to all head down to Diagon Alley together, not just for Harry to pick up his books but also so he could get new robes, a new cloak and some new gloves.

There were other things as well, since Harry _had_ been going to school for two years and some of his original supplies had been worn out or used up (or in some cases eaten by mistake), and while there Harry also saw a really _very_ nice looking broom that reminded him of something.

It took a minute or so to remember where it was from – it was the prototype broom that Mr. Lockhart had tried to escape on, which was apparently called the Firebolt. It did look sort of nice, and Harry was sure that Ron and Ginny would enjoy looking at it, but Harry's Quidditch days were probably behind him unless there was some kind of plan to bring him into the England squad he wasn't yet aware of.

(The idea of being a washed-up ex-sports-star at the age of thirteen gave Harry a bit of a giggle, and he had to apologize to Madam Malkin for his poor timing. She was quite understanding, and told Harry that she was quite grateful to him in any case for letting her expand her business for quadrupeds and other unusual situations.)

* * *

After he was properly set up with his supplies for next year, Harry went to visit Dean's family.

None of Dean's relatives were magical, which was a bit of a disappointment to everyone (especially Dean's sisters, two of whom were old enough to know where their brother went for most of the year), but they welcomed Harry into their home and Harry was able to show off some of the magic things he had which didn't require a wand.

Emily particularly liked the magic book that could change into other books, though she said it was a bit hard to read when she turned a really big book into a small one, and Lucy thought hard about how her brother said Harry was a dragon before asking for a piggyback ride.

It turned out that Harry _was_ able to fly with someone on his back, though it was a lot harder than books like _Dragonflight_ made it sound and Harry could only just do it with the eight-year-old Lucy Thomas. Lucy herself said that it was a really weird thing to do, because when she was flying it was like Harry (as in, a thirteen year old boy, to her) was just lifting her up in the air and not letting her down again.

Dean said he hoped that next time Harry got bigger it could be his turn.

* * *

More than once, Remus took Harry up to Hogsmeade via the Floo and then flying out to sea, heading to a remote island in the Hebrides where nobody actually lived.

Once there, they started on the special practice that Dumbledore had suggested. It was hard work, with Harry doing more-or-less nothing for the whole day but practice magic – first learning how to cast a spell, then casting it with his wand, improving his tail-casting until he could do it while he was on the move, and finally in some cases breath-casting it.

Harry had thought he was quite good, but Remus really pushed him as hard as he could get. It helped that there wasn't any time needed to do homework, or a book that had to be read, and even that there wasn't much distraction either – it was just spell practice over and over again.

Usually by the end of one of the practice sessions Harry's head hurt, but he didn't mind – it was really interesting, especially when Remus got into how to modify a spell as well as do the basic version.

There was just something inherently _neat_ about being able to fly overhead and cast a fireball spell from his mouth, then hit the same place with a water conjuring spell from the wand on his tail to put out the smouldering heather.

Even if Harry still usually missed with the second bit and Remus had to put the fire out.

* * *

Harry supposed that it was sort of natural that August would go faster than July, or seem to, because he was spending much more of it having fun.

He'd only taken a dozen or so pictures so far, partly because he kept forgetting to bring his camera, but the ones he had (which included a photograph of Diagon Alley and one of Moony, Padfoot and Harry – taken during the few minutes before Harry cast the Homorphus spell and reversed Remus' transformation) all seemed quite good to him so far.

It was easy to see what Colin Creevey saw in photography.

A day's visit to Ron's house had introduced Harry to the Burrow, as well – which was a house Harry would never have imagined before, but which was definitely the sort of place you could see a family of witches and wizards living – and Mrs. Weasley had given him a hug and thanked him for everything he'd done for them.

Dobby had done that as well, after going goggle-eyed over how Harry was bigger than he remembered, and then Mr. Weasley had taken Harry aside and asked him earnestly about how watches worked.

It was really sort of a pity Harry had run out of answers so quickly, because Mr. Weasley was clearly passionate about that sort of thing – he was also just not very _good_ with things like electricity, and it seemed like he often cast spells to cover the gaps.

Maybe there was a book about electricity that Harry could get him.

The one thing that Harry did wonder about, though, turned out to have quite an easy answer. He asked Mr. Weasley if he'd done Muggle Studies in school, and Mr. Weasley had sadly replied that he'd done Runes and Arithmancy only and had regretted not taking Muggle Studies since the start of fourth year.

That Ron was doing it was something Mr. Weasley found _very_ exciting.

* * *

Somehow, though Harry couldn't really remember actually _discussing_ it, they all ended up in Diagon Alley on the last day of August.

"Back to Hogwarts tomorrow," Dean observed. "I still don't get why Harry has to ride the train, though."

"What other options are there?" Ron asked. "I don't think they'd let him hang on to a rope on the back or something."

He frowned. "Actually, Harry, have you asked about that? It would be pretty cool. Kind of like… what's that Muggle thing?"

"Windsurfing?" Dean asked.

"Yeah, like windsurfing," Ron agreed. "I bet Harry would be up for it."

"Maybe," Harry mused. "For a bit, though, not for the only way to get all the way up to Scotland. I wouldn't have time to read any books."

"Fair point," Ron admitted. "I don't really know why you like most of those books, but if they're as good for you as stuff like _Tooth and Fang_ is to me I can understand _that_ you like it."

"What I meant was that his Dogfather has a house in Hogsmeade," Dean went on. "Couldn't he just Floo there?"

"Maybe, but I don't really feel like it," Harry shrugged. "It's nicer to spend time with you all, even if we probably do need to ask Percy to Extend the compartment."

"Hey, we could do it," Fred suggested. "It's not like it's an _impossibly_ hard spell, the kind of thing only the _Head Boy_ could manage."

"It _is_ above OWL level, though," Hermione countered.

"It's not like we've ever exactly let that stop us," George shrugged. "I'm pretty sure we can do it, and if we can't we'll just change and spend the journey that way."

He snapped his fingers. "Being able to turn into Trouble and slash or Strife is brilliant for letting us fit extra people in a compartment, _and_ it's the only way I know to make a single normal-sized doughnut bigger than my _head_."

"A noble cause indeed," Ginny agreed. "You two _did_ register, right?"

"Perce made us do it," Fred agreed mournfully.

"I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what I turn into," Neville said. "Does anyone have any idea?"

"Sirius said that you don't really know until it happens," Harry provided, and both the twins nodded in agreement. "But that it suddenly makes a lot of sense… though it doesn't always make sense _until_ you know something about yourself."

"That reminds me," Hermione said. "I wonder what Crookshanks will think of Animagi. He's a smart kitty, but is he that smart?"

"Are you sure the word you're looking for is 'smart', Hermione?" Ginny asked. "I'd have said 'Malicious' was a better word."

"No, I'm sure he's not malicious," Hermione shook her head. "He's part-Kneazle, isn't he? He can tell when someone's untrustworthy."

"Malfoy can usually tell when someone's rich," Ron snorted. "That doesn't stop him being rich as well."

He shrugged. "Still… I'm kind of looking forward to next time Tyler or Anna try to sneak into the Gryffindor dorms."

"That's a good point," George mused. "By George, George, I think he's got it! Our feline friend will be protection from our foxy foes!"

"Knowing them, I'd have thought Crookshanks might help them," Neville pointed out. "Or stop them. Whichever he found amusing at the time."

"So you're basically saying he'd be a third side," Fred muttered. "Well, we could do with some more challenge. How much trouble can one feline be?"

A resonant purr interrupted him, and he noticed with some surprise that Hermione's big pet cat was sitting on his lap.

"I don't know how you got there," he added. "But that's my property, not yours."

Crookshanks flirted his tail, and settled quite firmly in place.

"That's you told," Dean chuckled. "Though – I know you two aren't much of ones for lessons, but how much free time do you actually have with all the electives?"

"Well, speaking strictly in confidence," George said, as Fred tried without much success to divest himself of Crookshanks. "You remember last year's Quidditch? That was fairly normal, though it consumed so much of our free time we only had the time for _most_ of our normal pranks."

"And ignoring half of our lessons," Fred added. "It's very tricky to get ignoring your lessons right, you have to work out exactly when it's nothing interesting."

"We made charts," George said.

"I think I'll ask Percy for advice," Hermione decided.

"I'm still not sure how you're going to manage doing _all_ the subjects," Neville admitted, then shrugged.

"Oliver Wood's graduating at the end of this year, right?" Ginny asked. "He didn't do what that Marcus Flint did and fail a year?"

"No, he passed his sixth-year exams, though Toutatis alone knows how," Fred answered, accepting that his lap was Kneazle territory for the forseeable future. "It'd probably be Angelina as captain next year, if nothing changes, and she's slightly more sane."

"So far," George cautioned. "Remember the previous Quidditch captain went off to wrestle dragons."

He pointed at Harry. "So, what are you doing with the massive amounts of free time you'll have?"

"Well, I'm not sure if it'll turn out to be _massive_ amounts," Harry shrugged his wings again. "But there's a couple of clubs and societies I want to start. One each."

"Harry already mentioned this to me," Neville added. "I kind of want to see who shows up to the club."

"I'm more interested in seeing who shows up to the society," Hermione told them. "Especially the ones we haven't met yet."

"...like who?" Fred asked.

"I don't know, I haven't met them yet," Hermione pointed out. "But there were June, Tanisis, and the Smiths last year, there's probably going to be at least _someone_ who isn't human this year."

She paused. "That is, if they've actually defined human yet. According to Muggle biologists Veela would qualify as human, and so would Kitsune, Giants… anyone who can have children with humans, or with other humans anyway."

"Muggles don't _have_ Veela and stuff to examine," Fred protested.

"Which is why I don't think we can use it," Hermione agreed. "But Muggle biologists disagree about a lot of other things anyway. There's a big argument at the moment about whether any dinosaurs had feathers."

"There is?" Harry asked. "I thought the big argument was about whether dinosaurs were fast moving. That's what it said in _Jurassic Park_."

"Oh, we've known _that_ for a while," Hermione replied. "They found fossils of dinosaurs in a fight years ago… did you like _Jurassic Park_, by the way?"

Harry nodded, then held up a paw and waved it a bit.

"It kind of seems like the dinosaurs were a bit too ready to kill and eat everyone?" he said. "Even the dragons on the reserve I visited were nicer than that. But it was good apart from that."

Holidays were nice, because Harry could spend time relaxing and reading.

But going to Hogwarts was nice as well, and _this_ was one of the main reasons why.

* * *

AN:

And that's August.

No escaped convicts to deal with, or inflated aunts... though there is Harry's introduction to the cinema.


	36. A Third Year Dragon

Harry's first trip to Hogwarts had been a tricky one, with disruptions like a late Muggle train and the fact that everybody he met on the magical side of the barrier had wanted to say hello and shake his paw.

His _second_ trip to Hogwarts had gone a bit smoother, with the main delay coming from Dobby's misguided attempt to keep him safe – though Harry still wasn't entirely sure _what_ Dobby was trying to keep him safe from, and Dobby didn't know either except that it was meant to involve Riddle's diary and the Chamber of Secrets.

Now it was time for Harry's third trip to Hogwarts, and there were two ways to think about whether things would go wrong. Either it was easily time for there to be a trip where nothing went wrong, and it would all be fine, or by now it was obvious that things would always go wrong, and it wouldn't all be fine.

"You know what I just realized?" Ron asked, looking out the window at the countryside racing past.

"What's that?" Dean replied.

He rolled some dice, counted them up, then rolled two of them again.

"That's a full house," Neville supplied, checking the score sheet. "I think?"

"Yeah, I think it is too," Dean agreed, marking it down. "I wonder how you'd magic-ify this game."

"Maybe the dice would question your life choices," Ron suggested. "Anyway, I just realized that we're going to be as old as Fred and George were when we first arrived at Hogwarts."

"Good point," Harry agreed, thinking about how much more grown-up Fred and George had seemed then.

Of course, Harry had got to know them since.

"Speak for yourself," Ginny huffed. "I'm only going to be as old as _you_ were when I got to Hogwarts."

"And Fred and George are going to be as old as Percy was when we first came to Hogwarts," Neville supplied.

Dean whooped. "A large straight! Look at that!"

"It is kind of odd how important age is," Hermione mused. "Oh, I assume neither of you made Prefect?"

Trouble shook his head, nibbling on an Every Flavour Bean. He blinked, holding it in one paw, then jumped off the table they'd made out of everyone's trunks and blurred into probably-Fred.

"I think this one's egg," he said. "Hey, George, try it!"

He lobbed it to Strife, who jumped to catch it and gave it a nibble as well.

"Note to self, work on being able to talk while transformed," Fred added, then put his hands on the edge of the table. He pulled upwards, contracting back down to a pine marten in an instant, and hauled himself the rest of the way onto the table and walked over to a bag of nuts and berries that Dobby had packed for them.

Harry watched, interested, and then the compartment door slid open.

"Potter," Draco said, looking up at the luggage rack where Harry was lying (and which didn't contain any actual luggage at the moment, making it more of a dragon rack). "I thought you should know that our _new_ House-Elf is much better than Dobby was."

"That's great," Harry replied, pleased. "If you like your new house elf and treat him better, then everybody's come out of this better off – the Weasleys really like Dobby and he likes them, and you like your new elf."

"You _shouldn't_ be happy about it," Draco protested. "You should be upset that your plan didn't work, Potter – do you understand?"

"What plan?" Harry asked. "I suppose I wanted Dobby to be better off, but if he'd been happy with you there wouldn't have been anything to do in the first place."

Draco looked confused and puzzled, then shut the door.

Trouble and Strife both started giggling, which was quite a high-pitched noise. Strife actually fell off the ersatz table, then shook himself and shifted back to being George.

"I am never going to get tired of that!" he announced. "I know you don't _plan_ that, Harry, but it's still amazing to watch!"

That was the most unusual thing that happened on the whole trip, apart from Anna coming into the compartment and asking to borrow the Twins for something.

None of the third-years (or Ginny) knew quite what happened after that, but there seemed to be quite a lot of laughing and noise from further up the train.

"So, what do we think?" Hermione asked, as the train began to slow. "Did we fit?"

"Just about," Neville decided. "But next time I say we just set up Harry's tent. There's much more room in there."

He shrugged. "Or maybe I should get a tent myself. Is there a camping supply shop in Hogsmeade?"

"I know there's a joke shop in Hogsmeade," Ron supplied. "And a sweetshop, as well."

"And the most haunted building in Britain!" Hermione enthused.

"Isn't that Hogwarts, though?" Dean asked. "How many ghosts would there have to be in wherever this place is?"

"It's the Shrieking Shack," Hermione told him. "Unearthly howls and screeches come from it, everyone's too scared to investigate."

"I'm pretty sure _that_ place isn't haunted," Harry countered. "It's just where they send werewolf students to transform. Remus told me about it."

"Oh," Hermione replied, deflating a little. "That's… hold on."

She dug into her bag to find the history book she'd been relying on, and Ron continued. "Anyway, there's also a place which Fred and George always sound really scared of, it's a tea shop."

"I never heard about that," Ginny said, sounding a little annoyed that they were all talking Hogsmeade and she wouldn't get the chance for another year.

Harry hadn't either, but then he'd mostly been flying off to Fort William or Portree instead of stopping off so close to the castle.

"Well, it's supposed to be really frilly and girly and stuff," Ron explained. "The kind of place girls make boys take them on dates."

Ginny muttered something about stereotypes.

"I really want to correct this now," Hermione said, her copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ open in her hand. "But that would mean writing on a book, and that just seems wrong."

"Unless it's a puzzle book," Harry supplied, wanting to contribute.

Getting up to the castle went without a hitch – there was no sign of Nora, which was a little odd, though Harry did hear a loud "HELLO!" from the direction of the lake.

What _was_ a surprise, though, was when they entered the Great Hall. All the teachers except for Professor McGonagall and the always-absent Divination teacher were there, and Harry looked to see who the new Defence teacher was.

To his considerable surprise, there was a wolf sitting there… and wearing a well-tailored shirt, along with a tie in Gryffindor colours.

Something about the wolf seemed very familiar, and Harry puzzled over it until he was halfway to Gryffindor table – then realized all at once what was going on, and stopped so suddenly that Ron trod on his tail by mistake.

"Oops," his friend winced. "Sorry, mate."

Harry assured Ron that it was his fault, and they found a group of seats at Gryffindor table as Harry glanced back up at the high table.

That was still Moony, or Remus, or whatever the right way to think of him was.

Or should be think of him as Professor Lupin now?

Either way, he'd been learning defensive magic from Remus for a while now and it seemed like this was going to be a good year for the subject.

"You hear that, Harry?" Dean asked, interrupting Harry's thoughts. "Apparently there's someone in a wheelchair attending this year. I never really thought about that kind of thing before."

"I'm kind of surprised," Neville added. "Um, normally magical healing can fix that sort of thing… I wonder what's different here?"

"Maybe they're a Muggleborn?" Hermione suggested. "But I would have thought that any of the teachers who meet new Muggleborn families would have said… unless they have to stay in the wheelchair so nobody back home notices?"

Harry was all the more interested, now, and looked up at the ceiling. It was a slightly cloudy evening, with the sun having set an hour or two ago, but the full moon was just coming into view overhead.

He'd forgotten about that, which was a bit embarrassing. But then again, Remus could have had Sirius change him back as soon as the full moon rose and he transformed, so why was he sitting at the high table in werewolf form?

Why hadn't anyone raised a fuss?

A moment later, Harry remembered that June was in Second Year now and everyone in the hall was used to that. Maybe they just thought Moony was one of June's relatives.

Harry thought about that for the next few minutes as the rest of the non-first-years filed into the hall, and then the ghosts joined them. Lord Ridley flourished his sword, declaring that Harry would be slain one day if _he_ had anything to say about it, then Sir Nicholas told him off sharply and guided his fellow ghost down the table to an open place.

Then the First-Years came in, and Harry turned with everyone else to watch.

The wheelchair was easy enough to spot, moving roughly in the middle of the group of students, but the rumours hadn't been nearly as interesting as the truth. While the wheelchair was quite a sight, with wheels made of shining brass and which spun without needing to be pushed, the person _in_ the wheelchair was quite clearly no more human than Tanisis or Harry himself.

"That's a merman, isn't it?" Hermione asked, interested. "Or – a mer-boy, I suppose. Oh, where's my copy of _Fantastic Beasts?_"

"Never mind that, look who's behind him!" Ron said. "Isn't that a Cerberus?"

"Cerberus is a name, Ron," Hermione told him. "The correct term is three-headed dog. Like how Pegasus is a name and the correct term is winged horse."

Harry wasn't an expert at how three-headed dogs looked, but this particular one seemed to be a girl about as tall at the shoulder as one of the shortest humans in the line. The three neat bows on her heads were a distinct clue to that – one pink, one white and one yellow – and her heads looked around with the same kind of amazement that Harry remembered from his own first time at Hogwarts.

"How are they going to sort someone with three heads?" Neville asked. "Is it just the average? Or the majority?"

Dean snorted.

"I just imagined," he explained. "Okay, so one of you is a Slytherin, one of you is a Gryffindor, one of you is a Ravenclaw, so you're averaging out to Hufflepuff."

As they talked, Professor McGongall had all the first-years stop in their proper places, and then the Sorting Hat began to sing.

It was an interesting song, all about how the only thing the Four Founders of Hogwarts had had in common was that they all wanted to help everyone get a magical education. How Slytherin was for those who preferred to read people and Ravenclaw for those who preferred to read books, how Gryffindor was for those who would do what was right and Hufflepuff for those who would do what was hard.

Harry wondered if maybe the Sorting Hat had a thousand songs by now, or maybe just twenty or so that he reused over and over again.

Hagrid came in through the back door while the song was going on, taking his place in one of the free seats at the table – next to Professor Kettleburn, who looked quite delighted by something or other.

Then the sorting itself began, one student at a time. The first person to get sorted was a girl who went straight to Gryffindor, then a boy who the Sorting Hat deliberated over before sending him to Slytherin.

It turned out that the three-headed dog was "Barlos – Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail," which made Hermione stifle a giggle, and that the Sorting Hat went first on their left head and then their middle head.

After finally spending a few seconds on the right head, the Sorting Hat announced that they were conveniently all to go to GRYFFINDOR, and she came bounding over to cheers from the Gryffindor table before sitting right next to Colin Creevey.

"Are you Harry Potter?" her right head asked. "My uncle told me a lot about you."

The other two heads nodded, both looking as interested as the first, and Harry confirmed that that was him.

"Your uncle?" Ron repeated. "You mean… Fluffy?"

"Yes, uncle Fluffy!" her middle head agreed. "Oh, I'm Mopsy, by the way."

"Flopsy," volunteered the left. "And, as you can probably guess, she's Cottontail."

"Are you related to Beatrix Potter?" Cottontail asked. "I _really_ like her books!"

"I actually don't know," Harry had to admit. "Sorry."

"That's okay," Flopsy said brightly. "Cottontail's the biggest fan, but we all like them. We decided we should all have separate names for coming to Hogwarts, so that's why we picked!"

The girls had plenty of other questions, some of which Hermione answered for them and some of which only Harry could really answer.

Nobody in Gryffindor knew how the broom lessons had gone for June and Tanisis last year, though, which made Flopsy look a little worried – though Mopsy just shrugged (which was a little strange on a three-headed dog, looking more like a nod than anything) and said that they'd work it out.

When one of the fourth-years asked, they also added that it was okay to talk about them as one person or as three – it just depended how you found it most convenient.

"By Fred, Fred," Fred said. "I wonder what happens if Flopsy gets in trouble, and then Mopsy can point out that _she_ didn't do anything wrong and so she shouldn't go to Detention."

"Yeah, we tried it," Cottontail reported. "Our dads just said that we should have stopped her."

"What I want to know is whether you got one wand or three," Ron added.

"Oh, that was kind of interesting, actually," Cottontail said, ducking her head under her sisters to look at him. "We got one wand that Mopsy and I can use, and one wand that Flopsy and Mopsy can use. So it averaged out at two."

"We haven't tried anything yet," Flopsy supplied. "Our mums thought it might go badly wrong, and it'd be better to practice at Hogwarts."

Harry could certainly see the logic of that, and then someone else got sorted into GRYFFINDOR and he cheered along with the rest of the table.

Everyone seemed interested to hear what the mer-boy was even called, let alone what house he would end up in – partly because, as Hermione said, he might be a merrow or a selkie depending on what part of Britain he was from, or something else entirely if he was from outside the archipelago.

(Some people got hung up on the term archipelago, but Harry liked it.)

One of the new boys had met him on the train, and said that he hadn't actually said anything for the whole journey but had instead written on a piece of slate before erasing it again.

"MacUalraig, Tiobald!" Professor McGonagall read off, once 'Lark, Yolanda' had been sorted into SLYTHERIN, and Harry watched as the wheelchair went rolling smoothly forwards.

Tiobald stopped it just in front of the stool, reaching out to pick up the Sorting Hat, and flipped it around before putting it on his head.

It took about about twenty seconds before there was a decision, and Tiobald went over to RAVENCLAW. Luna waved to him, encouraging him to sit down next to her, and began talking animatedly in a language Harry didn't recognize.

Tiobald looked distinctly shocked, then replied in the same odd language, but then the next first-year went forwards to be sorted and Harry decided to look at them instead.

He hadn't known Luna spoke what was probably Mermish, though it certainly sounded like it would be helpful.

"Oh, what's the food like here?" Mopsy asked. "I know we don't get to eat until the end of the Sorting, but Uncle Fluffy said that there's really good cooks here!"

"That's the House-Elves," Ron told her. "Ever since Fred and George gave them loads of Muggle cookbooks they've been experimenting, though, so who knows what we might get."

"Well, if neither of you like it I'll have it," Cottontail said. "We don't all need to eat."

"I'm sure we'll all find something tasty," Flopsy cautioned her sisters.

It took perhaps another thirty minutes for everyone to be sorted – some people took only a few seconds, others took whole minutes, and one boy down in the U end of the alphabet took so long Dean had started checking his watch.

Once the last First-Year was duly housed, and the Sorting Hat had been taken away, Professor Dumbledore stood.

"Those of you who have been here before will doubtless know that I prefer to say a few words before the beginning of the Feast," he started. "However, on this occasion I have several things to say before we may all fill our bellies."

Waving a hand, he indicated Moony. "The first is to hope you will all extend a welcome welcome to Professor Moony, a new teacher for us in the subject of Defence against the Dark Arts."

Moony waved, and several people waved back a little nervously.

"Aside from that, the other things I wish to say are: Chair, Desk, Table, Lamp," the Headmaster continued. "As all of these are things and have been said, I feel I can let you take your repast."

He sat down, and the feast appeared on the golden plates all at once.

"...he's _weird_," said one of the First-Year girls. "Is he like that all the time?"

"Oh, not _all_ the time," Fred told her. "Sometimes he's _much_ more peculiar. Ooh, look, there's pasta."

There certainly was pasta, with the nearest one to Harry smelling like cheese and spinach and tomatoes, and a few places down there was something made out of balls of doughy material covered in a creamy bacon sauce.

It didn't look like there was anything that had been made specifically for Harry, but there was more than enough to eat anyway – from roast turkey and duck to a carrot-stick sculpture (which Flopsy enjoyed, though her sisters looked at most tolerant of her interest in it) to a fish-and-chips-and-mushy-peas platter so large that it took about a dozen people to get through.

Harry hadn't exactly been eating poorly at Sirius' house, but the food here at Hogwarts was so good – especially during a feast like this – that he always seemed to find space for just a little more.

He did notice that Moony accidentally ate a chicken bone, though. Hopefully that wouldn't give him problems later.

Then it was the desserts, and all three of the Barlos sisters were disappointed that they couldn't have any chocolate – until George pointed out that one of the dishes that had ended up halfway down the table by accident actually had a label declaring it as canine-safe chocolate.

Ten minutes later Flopsy declared that chocolate was the _best _thing.

"Is the food this good every time?" Mopsy asked, carefully licking a fork Cottontail was holding.

"It's usually this good, but there's not usually this much of it," Dean told her. "This is a feast, and it deserves the name."

"I'd guess you're used to working together to do things like that?" Neville added. "To use a fork, I mean."

"Yeah, we are," Flopsy agreed. "We need to work hard to stay friendly, because it's not like we can go off and spend time away from each other to cool down."

"Blimey, sounds awful," Ron said.

"I like to think it's made us into nicer people than we'd be otherwise," Mopsy said, giving Cottontail a nudge, and her sister put the fork down with a _clink_.

"You can say that, but I know what it'd be like if I couldn't get away from Fred, George and Ginny, and I'd have gone mad," Ron told her.

"You realize we're not only all in the same house but all _within earshot_, right?" Ginny asked.

"Yeah, but now I can just hide behind Harry," Ron replied. "Dragons are fierce protectors, right?"

"It's okay," Fred countered. "We'll just bring tributes."

"Fresh books, that sort of thing," George agreed. "There's no way Harry would set one of us on fire if we had a book he wanted to read."

Several of the First-Years giggled at the byplay, and Ron groaned.

"It's okay, Ron," Dean told him. "Dinner entertainment is a noble career."

Harry was grateful to the twins for helping the new students understand him a little bit better, without even sounding like they were doing it, and as he was wondering how (or if) he should thank them there was a gentle cough from behind him.

Turning, Harry saw that Tanisis was standing there.

"I'm sorry if I'm interrupting," she said. "But I wanted to ask Miss Barlos if she wanted help with managing as a quadruped."

"Are we allowed to take advice from you?" Cottontail asked, tilting her head on one side. "You're a cat, and we're dogs. I think there's a rule about it."

"It's probably more of a guideline, cats and dogs get on sometimes," Mopsy replied.

"I was actually thinking about something like that, as a more general thing," Harry said. "You know, kind of sharing ideas and stuff."

"Even if you don't, I'd certainly love to know," Flopsy added. "We've been sort of making some of it up as we go along."

"It's good to have what you're going to do worked out before exams," Tanisis confided. "But, then, I _am_ an Eagle. You're the Lions."

That gave Harry a bit of a chuckle, especially with how confused that statement had made the Barlos girls, but then the hubbub of conversation began to die down and Tanisis loped quickly back to her seat.

"It's the nicknames for Gryffindors and Ravenclaws," he explained quickly, as Dumbledore stood up.

"Well, now," the Headmaster said, smiling faintly. "I hope everybody has got themselves around as much food as they require. I assure you there will be more tomorrow, so if you do feel hungry at some point during the rest of the school year you will be able to get some."

Still smiling, he continued. "I would like to inform all of our new students, and some returning ones, that the name of the forest on the grounds is the _forbidden_ forest. This is a most convenient name, because as it happens it is out of bounds – a fact that is pleasingly easy to remember."

Mopsy tried to stifle a giggle.

"The list of forbidden items has been expanded by the diligent work of our caretaker, Mr. Filch," Dumbledore went on. "I have had to disappoint him by not including 'students' on the list, but it would be most helpful if everyone could refrain from disappointing him further by ensuring he has no reason to either expand it or confiscate anything currently on it."

Fred muttered something that Harry couldn't _quite_ hear.

"That does include you, Mr. and Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said, directing his attention to the twins. "As for the rest of the announcements, I will be brief. Mr. Hagrid has told me that everyone has already met our school mascot, a young dragoness by the name of Nora; she is usually to be found wearing a scarf, and she understands such words in English as 'no'. I would however advise not bothering her, because it is not polite."

With a faint smile, he stepped back a pace. "And now, a little music before bedtime."

Harry groaned.

"What's wrong?" Flopsy asked.

"The school song's always-" Harry began, then stopped as he heard a rustling of benches.

About two dozen students got up, hurrying to the front of the hall, and took their places in a triple line – tallest at the back, shortest at the front, with June sitting on one end.

Professor Flitwick walked out to join them, raising his wand as a conductor's baton, and made a few small gestures. Then everyone launched into song at once.

"_Double, double, toil and trouble,_

_Fire burn and cauldron bubble..."_

By the time they were finished, Harry had decided that he _much_ preferred this way of doing things.

"That didn't seem very bad," Cottontail said, confused.

"Ah, music," Dumbledore said, with a smile, and led the applause. He kept talking while the rumble of the clapping drowned him out, and when it faded down again Harry heard "…time for bed, I think. I always find it better to sleep during the night rather than the day."

"All right, everyone," Percy said, standing up. "Follow me, please. It's not hard to find the Gryffindor common room, but if we and the Ravenclaws have to go up the same route we'll get hopelessly mixed up. This way, follow me, please..."

On the way upstairs – through what was a bit more of a winding route than just taking the grand staircase, but which _did_ avoid running into all the similarly sleepy Ravenclaws heading up the same number of floors – some of the First Years asked about the school mascot and whether she was related to Harry.

Harry said he wasn't, though he also said that Nora did see him as a good friend, partly because he could talk to her.

As they reached the floor with the Gryffindor common room, Harry looked across to see if he could see the Ravenclaws. They were still on the grand stairs a floor or two below, and it looked like they were slowed down a little by Tiobald's wheelchair.

It was neat that it could climb stairs by itself, though.

Harry must have been more tired than he'd thought, because he fell straight asleep as soon as he was upstairs and he'd checked that everything had arrived properly from the train.

There weren't any dreams, or at least none that he remembered, and the next morning he woke up and stretched out with a yawn.

It was still quite early in the morning, with all four of the other Third-Year boys asleep, so Harry left them to get a bit more of a lie-in and snagged one of the books he wanted to read. He _could_ have jumped out the window, but it was raining, so he just headed down the stairs to the Gryffindor common room and out the portrait hole.

It felt nice to be back at Hogwarts. After two full years the passages and classrooms felt familiar, even homelike, though the same was true of Sirius' house and he'd only been there a month or so.

Maybe he was just good at getting used to things?

Jumping right down the central shaft of the staircases, Harry noticed in passing that a lot of the students he could see were consulting bits of parchment.

Wondering whether those were their schedules, he landed with a _thump_ before making his way into the Great Hall for breakfast.

"Here's your schedule," Fred said, handing one to Harry as he sat down. "Don't forget it's Thursday today, so we're starting mid-week."

Harry accepted it, looking it over.

Then paused.

"Fred?" he asked. "Did they make you a Prefect or something?"

"No, I pinched them from McGonagall's place," Fred replied with a shrug. "Got to keep my hand in, right?"

Harry wasn't quite sure how to react to that, so he decided to just read the schedule and see what it said.

It looked like he had Arithmancy first, then Transfiguration, and that was followed after lunch by Care of Magical Creatures and Ancient Runes.

"Blimey," George said, peering over his shoulder. "That's a pretty heavy start to the year, isn't it?"

Harry shrugged. "Maybe."

It was going to be tricky to manage a total of ten subjects, but he was sure he'd be able to give it a good go – and if he _did_ have to, he'd just give up whichever one turned out to be less interesting than the others.

Harry _did_ hope that wouldn't happen, but-

"Oh, actually, I did want to speak to Professor McGonagall," he remembered. "I'll see if she turns up."

Taking some egg from the plates, he started making himself breakfast. A toast and egg sandwich sounded like a nice idea.

Twenty minutes later, Professor McGonagall had indeed turned up. After giving Fred and George a very stern glare which didn't work very well, she'd listened to Harry's question and given him a nice simple answer.

Apparently all you needed to do to get a club on the list for the clubs-and-societies sign up sheets was to talk to your head of house, which meant Harry was already done. It was a nice thing to know, and Harry _could_ have just gone up to get his bag now in preparation for Arithmancy, but as he was thinking about that Ron came yawning into the hall so Harry decided to wait a bit longer.

"Any of you lot heard about a map that lets you see how all the bits of the castle link up?" Ron asked, depositing himself in a seat. "Seems like half the school have them. Would have been really helpful in first year."

Fred and George visibly exchanged glances.

"Oh, I think Moony was working on that," Harry said, suddenly making the connection. "They must have gone on sale without us noticing. If it's the one I'm thinking of, you put a wand to the parchment and say 'I'm lost'."

"Think you can get us one, Harry?" Ron asked. "It'd be dead helpful finding some of these new classrooms…"

"I can see if he's got a few spare," Harry agreed. "Oh, you don't do Arithmancy, right? What have you got first?"

Ron checked his sheet. "Um… Muggle Studies. That's at nine."

Neville arrived next, and checked his own schedule. Harry was interested to see what that one said, because Neville was doing both Muggle Studies and Arithmancy, and it turned out that Arithmancy had won out and Neville's Muggle Studies was another day.

"Kind of a shame, mate," Ron told him. "I was hoping we'd be in the same class."

"I'll manage," Neville decided. "It's not like Malfoy is going to do Muggle Studies, is it?"

"Yeah, good point," Ron agreed. "And Crabbe and Goyle wouldn't be able to work a Vichy Ar."

"I _think_ that's a VCR," Harry corrected. "But I don't think most Muggles can work it either. Uncle Vernon always had a lot of trouble when he tried."

Ron shrugged. "Well, that's what I'm going there to learn, isn't it?"

He snagged himself some toast, buttering two slices, then rolled a sausage into each one. "I might want to ask you and Dean for help if there's something really confusing, though."

Dean's own schedule was similar to Harry's, except with no Runes and with Divination in place of Arithmancy, but as he was making some cereal Neville asked the question they'd all been sort of wondering.

"So… what about Hermione?" he said. "Did she really manage to take _all_ the subjects?"

"Maybe it's like what they did with your Muggle Studies," Harry suggested. "Only for, um…"

He compared his schedule with the others. "For Divination, and Muggle Studies, and – no, for Arithmancy and Muggle Studies, I think?"

Comparing Neville's Arithmancy slots only made things more confusing, though, because Neville's Arithmancy would clash with the Runes slot Harry and Ron both had.

As they were trying to work it out on a piece of scrap parchment, Hermione finally arrived.

"I'm not used to sleeping here again yet," she said, grabbing some toast. "My window at home faces east… do we have the schedules yet?"

She took hers when Fred offered it, checked it over, and nodded. "All right-"

"What does your schedule look like?" Harry asked. "We've been trying to work it out..."

Hermione showed them, quickly eating some toast, and the boys all stared.

"...Hermione, this schedule's impossible," Dean said eventually.

"Unless you're Ruth," Harry added. "He could do three things at the same time, but he had to time travel to do that."

"Don't be silly, it wouldn't be scheduled if it was impossible," Hermione replied, taking her schedule back. "I asked Professor McGonagall, and she's _very_ sure about it."

Harry blinked, supposing that that was him told.

Arithmancy was one of the classes that wasn't _that_ hard to find. Harry felt sorry for Dean, who had to borrow one of Remus's maps (whatever he'd ended up calling them, which was something Harry had missed) to find where the Divination class was, but Arithmancy was a fairly simple matter of going up to his room for his things, picking up his Transfiguration books as well as his Arithmancy ones, and then dropping down to the fourth floor and going along a corridor.

Several of the other students in his year were there already, mostly Ravenclaws, though Theodore Nott was there as well.

"Potter," he said. "Surprised to see you doing this class."

"It sounded interesting," Harry replied, tail waving slightly. "I'm surprised you're the only Slytherin doing it."

"I'm not," Theodore replied.

"Yes, we knew that," Terry Boot quipped quickly.

Theo shot the Ravenclaw a black glance, then subsided. "Subject clash," he explained shortly. "Had to move this one or Creatures."

Sally-Anne Perks arrived then, followed by Neville, and Hermione arrived just a minute or so before the bell.

"Oh, come on..." Sally groaned. "Are _all_ the other Gryffindor girls doing Divination?"

"Some of them might be doing Muggle Studies," Neville pointed out. "Or maybe they ended up on the other side of a subject clash and they _are_ doing Arithmancy. I'm not really sure how they work it out."

The bell went, and they all filed into the classroom – Harry ending up next to Lily Moon – and up at the front Professor Vector waited until everyone was sitting down before smiling.

"Welcome, all of you, to Arithmancy – which, if I do say so myself, is the most _rigorous_ subject this school offers, outside of perhaps Astronomy."

She tapped the board with her wand, and rows and columns of numbers appeared. "Arithmancy is a science, not an art – understand that now. It is about predicting the future, it is about verifying that your predictions are correct, and it is about what you can do _with_ the ability to calculate what will happen. There will be some wand-waving in this class, yes, but more than anything else there will be a lot of maths. I hope everyone understands that going in."

Harry tilted his head a little, wondering what all that meant, and noticed that Hermione seemed distinctly eager to get on with it.

"As you are no doubt aware, Arithmancy is one of those classes in which the creation of new spells can happen," the Professor said then. "It is not unique in this, but it is unique in that an Arithmancer who has correctly done their calculations will know _exactly_ what their new spell will do before they first cast it. Unfortunately, that is not something we will be working on this year, as the mathematics required to do so is quite complex. This year we will be working on simpler predictions."

Harry nodded along, interested, and the teacher seemed to consider that enough of an introduction to the subject.

"Now, if you will turn to page four of your _Numerology and Grammatica_, we will begin with a very simple example of how mathematical predictions can be made. This example involves no magic, but it does involve decks of playing cards."

Theodore put up his hand.

"Mr. Nott," Professor Vector invited him to speak.

"Why playing cards?" he asked. "Isn't that something that's more like Divination?"

"You will see, Mr. Nott," Professor Vector told him. "You will see."

Harry found the maths in Arithmancy really interesting.

He was sure they were going to get into the importance of things like the number seven later in the course, it _was_ in their textbook, but the first thing they'd done had just been to calculate out how likely various combinations of cards were based on what they already knew.

Thinking about how much information you did and didn't have was already interesting, and then you got into how to do the _calculation_ – it was about counting up all the possible outcomes, and comparing them to the outcomes you were interested in, but it was all handled with fractions and multiplications and numbers with exclamation marks after them, like the number was _really serious_ about being a number.

Harry got the sense that the cards were just there as a convenient set of things with crossed-over labels, which was why it was more the maths of things that mattered instead of trying to work out _why_ you got the Seven of Clubs this time.

At the end of the hour or so of maths, Professor Vector told them to do the problems on pages five and six of the book, and then let them go.

Harry wanted to talk to Hermione and Neville about how they'd found it, but he lost track of Hermione as they left the classroom. Neville was willing to talk, though, and admitted he'd had a bit of trouble with the whole thing.

Harry told him that they could do the homework together, and that seemed to make Neville much more comfortable. He wondered if maybe it would help to get some Muggle maths books as well, just in case Neville hadn't learned all of Key Stage 2 maths, and when he mentioned that Neville asked what sort of things they did in Key Stage 2 maths.

That got them to the Transfiguration classroom, and Hermione showed up again accompanied by Dean.

"Hey," Dean nodded to them. "How was Arithmancy?"

"Full of maths," Harry answered, and Neville nodded confirmation.

"What about divination?" the other boy added. "Did that go well?"

"Pff, I wish," Dean said. "The teacher said I was going to die."

Neville blinked.

"You… don't seem very worried," he admitted.

"Well, yeah, I know I'm going to die _eventually_," Dean pointed out. "Besides, I've seen films. The black guy usually dies first."

That made Hermione snigger, breaking her out of a bad mood she seemed to be in.

"I really don't think much of this Divination teacher," she added. "And remember Star Wars? Lando Calrissian survived all the movies."

"Good point," Dean nodded. "Though apparently a big black dog is a bad omen? I said I'd seen one last Christmas and she really freaked out."

"Maybe she doesn't like Sirius," Harry suggested.

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Maybe she just doesn't like Black people."

"That's a new one," Neville said. "Mr. Black loves puns, you should tell him that one."

"I'll lend you my mirror tonight?" Harry suggested.

They were joined by Ron, who arrived before doing a double-take. "Hermione? How did you get here before me?"

"What are you talking about?" Dean asked. "She was in Divination, she followed me straight here from there."

Harry was fairly sure Hermione had done Arithmancy, and said so.

Hermione looked between her friends, then sighed. "Look… I can't talk about it, okay? Professor McGonagall told me not to talk about it, so can you please not talk about it either?"

Put like that, it was hard for any of them to refuse.

"Just make sure you don't make any of the mistakes they make in the Pern books, okay?" Harry asked. "If that's what's going on."

There was time for Ron to talk a bit about Muggle Studies, and how Professor Burbage had started with some simple questions intended to test how much everybody already knew about simple Muggle things like cars and electricity and television.

(Well, not simple at all, but things that most Muggle children at least understood some things about.)

Professor Burbage had then told them all about how a lightbulb worked, and why Muggles used them instead of candles, and Ron was clearly fascinated by the idea of passing a kind of energy through a coil of wire and making it so hot it glowed – and how that meant it was _less_ of a fire risk than a candle was.

Then Transfiguration started, and Professor McGonagall told them about Animagi – starting with a demonstration.

It was interesting to hear what she had to say about it, but Harry couldn't help but find it a bit less _new_ than Arithmancy had been – or Ron's Muggle Studies, for that matter – because of how long he'd spent with Sirius.

When it was almost a coin toss whether you'd see Sirius or Padfoot at any given time, you sort of got used to the idea.

There was a lot to write down, though, about the fine details of how the transformation worked, and especially how it was different to Human Transfiguration (and how it was much less dangerous once set up, though Professor McGonagall warned them all sternly against experimenting.)

"I'm not sure it really counts as experimenting if you have the instructions, an expert you can talk to, and three brothers who already did it," Ron rationalized, as they headed up to the common room. "What do you think, Hermione?"

"Well… like you said, if Percy has done it, it probably is okay," Hermione agreed.

"Should we get some of our homework done?" Harry suggested. "We've got some time before lunch."

"Yes!" Hermione agreed, sounding much more enthusiastic about that. "I've got so much already, but I should be able to get the Muggle Studies homework done quickly, and then there's the Transfiguration… aaargh!"

"That's right, dear," the Fat Lady said, opening up with a _click._

"Weird password this week," Neville commented, then scooped up Trevor as the toad tried to make a break for it. "Huh… hey, Ron, think I can borrow your old rat cage? It might help make sure Trevor doesn't escape."

"Sure, I don't want it," Ron agreed with a wave of his hand. "I'd have given it to Ginny, but Pigwidgeon would probably bounce off the walls like a Bludger."

Neville went upstairs to sort that out, and the rest of them grabbed their usual table in the common room. There were quite a few Gryffindors here already, those who didn't have lessons before lunch on Thursdays, and even as they sat down someone yelped in surprise and Trouble went running off up the spiral stairs.

It really was nice to be back.

* * *

AN:

Yes, the first of September 1993 was a full moon...

Does this mean there are two new non-human students this year, or four?

I'd say average it out at three.

The choir, meanwhile, is based partly on the one from the Prisoner of Azkaban movie.

And as for the lessons... well, it's interesting to come up with ways that Arithmancy could _work, _including as a magic subject, while still being about "predicting".


	37. Yes Still The First Week

After lunch – Hermione was surprisingly hungry – everyone who was doing Care of Magical Creatures went out onto the grounds.

Ron had said he'd be doing his Muggle Studies homework, but then Neville had pointed out that he had Muggle Studies later that afternoon, and Ron had agreed to wait until after the last period of the day to do his homework so Neville had someone to do it with.

It was all a lot more complicated than when everyone had the same timetable, but the way it all worked out was that Harry, Dean and Hermione all joined the rest of the Gryffindors and Slytherins doing Creatures on a big lawn not far from the lake.

Professor Kettleburn came striding up as the bell rang, made tinny by the distance to the castle, and beamed. "All here? Excellent!"

He clapped his hands together, one of them a normal arm and the other a kind of gears-and-cogs artificial arm that clearly used magic to function. "First thing to warn you is that all magical creatures have a danger rating, from one-X to five-X. These ratings do not mean that a creature will hurt you – it is quite possible to work safely with many of the five-X creatures without suffering any sort of harm. But you should always be careful – a higher X rating shows how likely it is that _you_ will be the one hurt by your mistakes!"

The idea seemed quite entertaining to him.

"Now, who can name an example of a one-X creature. Yes, miss Brown?"

"A Flobberworm?" Lavender asked, sounding quite disapproving of the animal in question.

"Ah, yes, the humble Flobberworm!" Professor Kettleburn agreed. "The _very_ humble Flobberworm, it must be admitted! They don't have the glamour of most magical creatures, but Flobberworms serve very important roles in the development of potions and in finding out if people have the _talent_ for taking care of magical creatures."

He smiled broadly. "Now, two years ago, your first lesson would have been on taking care of Flobberworms – but instead, I think perhaps we should have something a little more impressive."

The Creatures professor whistled sharply, and a pair of big black wings spread at the other side of the lake.

Even though everyone had seen Nora before, there were still gasps as she took off and flew low over the waters of the Black Lake. Ripples curved away to either side of her racing form, created by the wind from her body and from the tips of her wings, and she pulled up into a flare before landing with a _thump_ in front of them all.

"Hello!" she waved, then paused and sniffed – and prowled forwards a little, inspecting Harry.

"You got bigger!" she announced. "When did that happen?"

"It was while I was on holiday," Harry explained.

"You're still small," Nora judged. "Will you grow bigger again?"

"Probably," Harry guessed. "I'm not really sure, to be honest."

"Do you know, that's more impressive than I remembered," Professor Kettleburn said. "Can you do that with any animal, or is it just dragons?"

"I don't even know if it's all dragons," Harry admitted. "So far it's only worked with Nora."

"How peculiar," the Professor mused, then gave Nora a scratch on the top of her eye ridge. "Now! What I want everyone to do is to take notes on Nora here – write down important details, do a sketch, anything you like. Remember to think about what's worth knowing!"

He laughed. "Much more exciting than doing it on Flobberworms, am I right?"

* * *

The only observation reports of a magical creature Harry had seen were the ones in the travelogues he'd read (like _Around Africa By Broom_) and the one for _him_ that Charlie Weasley had done a couple of years ago.

He certainly couldn't draw as well as Dean could, so his sketch of Nora was a bit rudimentary, but apart from that he tried to point out details of things like her wings (where he could mention words like 'Alar phalange', the technical term for the finger-struts that supported a wing) and the identifying features of a Norwegian Ridgeback.

After checking his copy of _The Atlas of Beasts and Creatures_, Harry also dedicated about half his report to behaviour. He did stick to the things that happened during the lesson, but there was still quite a lot to talk about – in particular how different Nora's reactions were to how a normal Norwegian Ridgeback was supposed to act (i.e. touchy, territorial and quick to anger).

There was a bit about halfway through when Draco asked if Nora was actually a dragon, but Professor Kettleburn laughed and replied that he could ask her to breathe fire if he _really_ wanted to know, adding that he'd been set on fire by her about a dozen times and one of those hadn't even involved a flame-freezing charm.

He said it was a good way to warm up his old bones on a cold and frosty morning.

* * *

Care of Magical Creatures was followed by Runes, which was the last new subject on Harry's list. It was sort of nice they were all on the same day, letting him get a good look at them, and he and Hermione met Ron outside a classroom on the second floor.

"...what I've heard is that we're doing star charts and stuff," Ron was telling Justin Finch-Fletchley and Ernie Macmillan. "I'm not sure if that means we'll have to learn how to identify individual stars, though, or just the patterns."

"Like if it's a big giant star?" Justin asked. "What are they called… red giants?"

"Yeah, but it's weird because stars have to be big and close to show up big," Ron replied. "Sirius isn't especially big, it's just – oh, hey guys."

"Afternoon," Harry agreed, waving.

"How was Creatures?" Ron added. "What did you start on? Quintapeds?"

"Don't be silly, they wouldn't put a five-X creature in the first class," Ernie replied. "Present company excepted, of course, Harry."

"_Actually_, unlike Harry, Nora _is_ a dragon that's in _Fantastic Beasts_," Hermione told him. "So you _could_ say that Harry isn't a five-X creature at all, but Nora certainly is."

"You mean you studied Nora?" Ron asked, and sniggered. "Bet that wasn't too hard for Harry, he can speak to her."

"Everyone can speak to Nora," Harry protested. "If you use simple words, she might even understand you, though only Hagrid really knows enough Dragonish to understand any of her answers."

"Yeah, mate, but by that definition I can speak to my griffin," Ron pointed out. "Anyway, what do you think we'll be doing in the first lesson?"

"I expect it'll be Futhark," Hermione said. "That's certainly what our textbook is about."

* * *

Professor Vector had been thin and fair, with a little-or-no-nonsense attitude to teaching her subject, while Professor Kettleburn was full of enthusiasm and missing a slightly alarming number of the limbs he'd been born with. Professor Babbling was different again, a pleasant-looking witch who looked younger than Sirius (which probably meant she was about Sirius' age) and who welcomed them all into her classroom individually.

Once they were sat down, she walked up to the front and chalked a few words on the board. They were in the slightly spiky Futhark rune alphabet, instead of English, and as soon as she was done she turned around to the class.

"Runes," she began, "are languages. To be more specific they are _written_ languages, and specifically languages which, for one reason or another, were and are used for the crafting of magical effects that do not require a wand."

She smiled. "No doubt that all sounds very impressive, but I'm afraid that actually doing those things is usually a lot more bother than just using a wand to do the same thing. We do _some_ rune crafting at Hogwarts, but it's mostly going to be things you could do with your wand much more quickly. Though some of my students do make useful things to keep around in future, and I hope you will be more of the same."

* * *

As a demonstration piece, Professor Babbling brought out a little device that looked a lot like a desk fan, if a desk fan had been designed by someone who was only familiar with windmills.

"The rune sequence is broken, like this," she explained, putting her finger on one of the bits of what looked like stone. "But if I push this in here..."

The stone slid into place, and there was a rising _whirr_ as the blades spun up to speed.

Susan Bones put her hand up. "Miss, isn't that something you could do with a wand?"

"You could indeed!" Professor Babbling agreed. "But I doubt you could make one that still works after seven hundred and forty years without needing the charms renewed."

"Blimey," Ron breathed.

"That is the reason why anyone does rune crafting at all," Professor Babbling told them brightly, deactivating the runic windmill and putting it away in a drawer. "Wanded magic is usually quicker, more versatile, and quite convenient enough even before you consider how it is much easier for most people to do. But a runic object made correctly will, quite simply, never fail until the runes themselves have been damaged."

Harry could _definitely_ see how that would be useful.

* * *

Professor Babbling went through the basic qualities of magic runes for the next few minutes, such as how runes were both stronger and more durable (and thus more worth the effort) the more permanent and better marked they were, and how you could make it so that a set of runes didn't start "working" until you were ready for them.

At the conclusion of that lecture, she looked around at them all.

"Sadly, to be able to do any of that, you first need to understand how to both write and read runes," she told them. "The runic language we cover to OWL level is called Futhark, and one reason we use it is that it is composed _entirely_ of straight lines – which are, naturally, much easier to write exactly than curves..."

* * *

Runes felt a lot more complicated than English, though some of it did remind Harry of the magical languages in other books he'd read. Like how usually runes had a meaning by themselves, instead of only really meaning anything when they were arranged into words.

(Well, Harry supposed that an A had a meaning, and a B had a meaning – or, at Hogwarts, an O had a meaning and an E had a meaning – but most runes were like that and had that meaning all the time.)

It sounded like they were only beginning to explore the subject, which was great, and Professor Babbling's homework for them was to write out a runic alphabet with at least one meaning for each of the runes.

Ron said that sounded like copying out of the rune dictionary, but Harry didn't mind – it was a nice simple start, and it might be helpful to have some parchment like that around. Though he _was_ hoping they'd get to how to do magic things with runes eventually, it might be a nice summer project.

Though perhaps not _this_ summer.

* * *

That evening, while Neville was discussing Muggle Studies with Ron to see if there were any differences between their lessons – Neville had found to his surprise that Blaise was one of the Slytherins doing it, apparently – Harry finally finished the last of his Transfiguration homework.

He'd made it a bit longer than usual by talking about Sirius and Percy, as well, as examples of Animagi and how it could be quite easy or quite hard to see the thing which an Animagus carried over from their human body to their animal one. (Percy's flash of red was an easy one, but Sirius had been kind of tricky to work out. It had only been after seeing both of Sirius' forms several times that Harry had realized it was his shaggy mane of hair that Padfoot sported, not just a normal dog's fur.)

As he put his quill down and stoppered his ink bottle, Seamus and Parvati came over – accompanied by about half the Gryffindor first years, including the Barloses.

"Hey, um, Harry?" Seamus began. "You got a moment?"

"Sure," Harry agreed. "I was just finished anyway."

"Told you," Parvati said smugly.

"Hey..." Seamus complained. "Anyway, some of the firsties were wondering something, and they asked us, and someone said you might know."

"We had our first Defence lesson," Mopsy explained. "And there was someone called Professor Lupin teaching it."

"But we were kind of looking forward to a wolf Professor," Cottontail added.

"There's a wolf in second year Hufflepuff, I heard," added one of the first-year boys. "My brother said."

Harry frowned, wondering how to explain it.

"You spent some of the summer with Sirius Black, right?" Seamus checked. "He's supposed to know Professor Lupin. What's that about?"

"They're the same person, but he gets kind of embarrassed about it sometimes," Harry said eventually. "I don't think he can talk when he's a wolf, so it would probably be hard to teach the lessons."

"Oh!" Cottontail said, with the air of someone who'd just had a great mystery solved. "That explains it! Thanks!"

"Told you!" someone called from the back.

"Martin, you _didn't_ say that," another girl grumped.

"I did!" Martin replied. "I said he was an Animagus!"

"And don't worry about asking me questions like that yourself," Harry added. "If I'm not busy doing homework, it's no trouble – and if it's important, don't worry about if I'm busy or not."

"Blimey, that's sounding a bit Prefectish," Ron volunteered. "Isn't that their job?"

Dean snorted. "There's, what, six Prefects? There's a lot more than six first-years."

"Yeah, I think anyone who's available should be okay with being asked questions," Harry shrugged. "If it makes things easier, anyway."

"Neat," Seamus declared. "Well, thanks for that."

As they left, Harry looked over to Hermione, and frowned.

"When did you get up this morning?" he asked. "You look tired."

"I got up later than you, Harry," Hermione replied, looking over the columns of numbers for her Arithmancy. "Hmm… do you think the book means a fifty-two card deck, or a fifty-four card deck?"

"One of the other problems says you divide the cards into four sets of thirteen," Harry pointed out. "Hermione, I don't know how you did all those classes today, but don't forget…"

He trailed off. "Maybe you should ask Percy how he dealt with it. He did all twelve subjects as well, and he was a Prefect in fifth-year on top of that."

Hermione looked torn, then sighed.

"I really _should_, shouldn't I?" she asked. "Okay, I'll do that, but I'll finish my homework first."

"Sure," Harry smiled. "But don't forget, Thursdays are going to be the worst homework days for you this year. Probably for me too..."

"Hey, so I had this idea," Dean said then, attracting Harry's attention. "You know how people don't know what electric stuff does and doesn't work at Hogwarts?"

Harry nodded, remembering a discussion from last year.

"Well, I realized that old film cameras don't actually need any electricity at all – not really," Dean went on. "Just a bright light and a crank, and you can make the bright light with a wand anyway. So you could show silent films here."

"The Wizarding Wireless works too," Harry said. "I wonder if there's a way for wizards to record sound? Or is it all live?"

Neither of them really knew, but it was kind of fun to talk about that sort of thing.

Fred and George had come over halfway through, looking like they wanted to ask Harry about something, but then exchanged a glance and bolted upwards to their rooms.

They'd probably thought of something.

* * *

Bright and early the next morning, before breakfast, Harry flew down to Hagrid's hut to say hello.

Hagrid was quite pleased to see him, and so was Fang – apparently more than a year of exposure to Nora and two to Harry had slowly trained the big dog to see dragons as less threatening than before – and he was quite touched to hear that Harry wanted to take a few photographs.

Harry had never actually heard about how you were supposed to behave when you got your photo taken in the wizarding world, partly because Sirius had either never bothered to explain or never learned in the first place, so he was glad to listen when Hagrid gave him a quick rundown. The polite thing to do was to try and be pleased that you were in the photo, and to wave, so that in the photograph your picture was pleased to be there as well.

As for Nora, the whole thing left Nora very excited indeed. She jumped around a lot, actually making it quite hard for Harry to take a photo that had her in it, and after a few minutes Hagrid decided the best thing to do would be to have her sit down and give her a nice scratch while Harry took the photograph.

* * *

After breakfast, the morning was mostly taken up with Double Potions.

Harry was curious about whether Aunt Petunia had known Professor Snape (back before he was Professor Snape, that was) but that was just something to be curious about. What was actually important to concentrate on was the potion they were making, which was one of the shrinking potions from the summer homework.

"Anyone who bothered to pay the least bit of attention to their homework over the summer will doubtless have noticed that the Shrinking Solution is a much more versatile potion than the simple measures for reducing size we have covered so far," Professor Snape began, chalking the instructions on the board.

He paused and then turned to the class. "Anyone who was _not_ aware that we would be doing the Shrinking Solution this year should calm down, and take a deep breath. Doubtless you're the type to forget."

Daphne swallowed a giggle.

"You will have noticed that this potion contains a great number of ingredients," Professor Snape went on. "Since the brewing process takes at _least_ half an hour but not more than an hour, doubtless those of you with working brains will realize you should be doing nothing but preparing ingredients until there is around an hour left in the lesson, and only then start brewing. Pay attention to details like this, and do not be so impatient you begin brewing too early; this will be the only time you get this warning."

Harry wrote it down, thinking it was good advice. It was sort of obvious once you'd said it, but maybe it would be less obvious if you didn't do a lot of cooking?

Anyway, there was a long list of ingredients – the ones on the board were the same as the ones in the book – and Harry got to work, discussing briefly with Daphne before starting on the daisy roots and the shrivelfigs.

"Only one rat spleen," Professor Snape instructed. "Your book says two, because it was clearly written by a dunderhead. Do not be a dunderhead."

"Good life advice," Daphne commented. "Usually, anyway."

Harry wondered why Professor Snape didn't just write a Potions textbook himself.

* * *

Most of the lesson was a bit of a blur for Harry – cutting roots so they were split into exactly three equal parts to be added at the beginning, middle and end of the process, measuring out what a "dash" of leech juice represented, slicing caterpillars…

The idea was supposed to be that the leech got bigger when it drank blood, the caterpillars got bigger and then metamorphosed into something else entirely and the Shrivelfig got smaller, so those all sensitized the potion to the concept of changing size – along with half a dozen other things – while the rat spleen was included because rats were small animals that could squeeze through very small spaces.

The axolotl gills were to control how the potion didn't just make things shrink but actually made them younger if need be, which was a really strange effect, and the daisies were sort of there as punctuation between different parts of the process.

Professor Snape informed them that they should be done by now, then brought out half-a-dozen frogs and announced that they were going to test some of the potions.

It was quite impressive when Hermione and Neville's potion was fed to one of the frogs and it shrank down into a little tadpole without any legs, especially when the others didn't shrink down nearly as far.

Then the Professor came to the last cauldron he'd picked.

"Mr. Crabbe," he began, looking up. "Mr. Goyle. Tell me, did you actually pay attention to the instructions?"

"Yes, Professor," Gregory muttered, and Vincent nodded silently.

"Interesting," Professor Snape hummed, taking a few drops of the potion out with a ladle. Electric blue liquid cascaded back into the cauldron, and the teacher raised his gaze again. "Are either of you colour-blind?"

"No, Professor," Vincent said this time.

"That would at least explain why you appear not to have noticed your potion is a different colour to all the rest," Snape observed. "Do either of you know what you did wrong?"

Neither boy replied, though Hermione put her hand up.

"Miss Granger," Professor Snape invited. "Do enlighten us."

"If the daisy roots are added all at once, it means the magical effects of the different stages get mixed up together," Hermione said promptly. "To fix it you'd need some dried Billywig sting and a quarter-ounce of deep-sea angler liver, to separate out the qualities by density, and then-"

"Quite," he said, raising a hand. "Most impressive. Well, I suppose I will do my best to demonstrate _why_ you must follow instructions in my class."

Rather than a frog, this time, he took out a glass box which contained a beautiful Red Admiral butterfly.

"A correct potion would cause the butterfly to shrink smoothly back into a caterpillar," he explained, using a spoon to take a droplet of Vincent and Gregory's potion and slip it into the box.

The red-winged butterfly fluttered down, took a sip, caught fire and exploded.

"If you are foolish enough to think that it would be a good idea to drink _that_, please, don't let me stop you," Professor Snape said into the silence. "And next time, follow the instructions _precisely_."

* * *

"I still don't really _get_ that," Ron admitted, cutting open a thick slab of pita bread. "Why would it catch fire and explode?"

"It's because of the metabolism," Hermione answered. "It's like… well, your food is flammable, right? Bread is, at least."

"Right," Ron agreed, putting some carved chicken into the pita and adding mayonnaise and lettuce. "But probably not once I've put this much mayonnaise on it."

"I don't know," Harry replied, frowning. "In my experience almost anything is flammable if you try hard enough."

Neville sniggered.

"Exactly," Hermione said, waving her hand at Harry for a moment. "It's got energy in it, that's kind of why you eat it."

"I eat it because it's tasty," Ron countered, taking a bite. He chewed meditatively for a few seconds, then swallowed. "No, needs more spice..."

"You eat things because you're _hungry_," Hermione tried. "For energy. Anyway, the butterfly had energy in it, and normally it uses that energy to do things like… fly. And… mostly fly, really. But the potion made that all really confused."

"Oh, right," Ron nodded. "So it's like how one of those rocket engines Harry got me burns the fuel steadily, but if you mixed it all up randomly you'd probably get something that would explode."

"...is anyone else weirded out when Ron makes analogies like that?" Dean asked. "Because I am."

* * *

After lunch they headed up to the Defence classroom, which seemed to be a different room than before, though perhaps that wasn't unusual – there were certainly plenty of unused rooms – and which contained about half of the third-year Gryffindors already, along with one Marauder.

"Afternoon, Mr. Lupin," Neville said, then blushed. "Oh, I mean, _Professor_ Lupin."

Remus – or Professor Lupin, Harry decided to think of him as – smiled kindly. "It's quite understandable, Mr. Longbottom. Or Neville."

Neville sat down, still looking quite embarrassed.

A few other students filed in, and Harry frowned. It looked like they only had Gryffindor in the Defence lessons this year, which sounded like it would be a lot more work for Professor Lupin than it could have been.

Maybe he was going to do the same thing Hermione was doing?

Harry shook the thought away as Professor Lupin stood up.

"We're going to be doing a practical lesson today," he said. "I would like your help in dealing with a problem in the staff room."

Dean put his hand up.

"Dean?" Professor Lupin invited.

"Um… Professor, are we your first class this year?" Dean asked. "Because if you'd like our help with a problem, how is it still a problem if you've already had other lessons?"

"A very good question," Professor Lupin agreed. "You're the first to ask that. There _was_ a problem in the staff room, but after Professor McGonagall and I dealt with it I realized it would make a good lesson. Follow me, please."

* * *

The staff room was surprisingly close to their Defence classroom, and a minute or so later Professor Lupin was waving them all in.

"Who here has heard of a Boggart?" he asked, shutting the door once everyone was in and their bags were in the corner, and a few hands went up. Harry had vaguely heard of them, but he didn't think it counted, and Professor Lupin called on Parvati Patil first.

"They're a kind of spirit," she said. "Quite common hiding in out-of-the-way places in old Wizarding homes."

"Quite correct," Remus agreed. "Neville?"

"Grandmother told me that you should never face a Boggart alone," Neville contributed.

"Also correct," Remus said with a smile. "A Boggart is a spirit, as Parvati says, and it is a shape changer. When someone sees it, it will turn into whatever happens to be their greatest fear."

Ron muttered something about spiders.

"Fortunately, there are several ways in which a Boggart can be countered," Remus went on. "Does anybody know what they might be?"

Sally-Anne Perks suggested that you could just not look at it, asking if that was why people hid under the covers, and Remus laughed before agreeing that it was a good last resort – though he cautioned that once a Boggart _had_ changed it wouldn't go back to being whatever a Boggart was when "resting" if the person it was targeting was still scared.

Lavender Brown supplied that with more than one person they could try to confuse it, and Hermione said there was a spell you could use to disrupt a Boggart, both of which Remus agreed with.

"Very good," he told them all. "Yes, the spell is Riddikulus, and the wand movement is like so."

At his prompting, everyone got out their wands. Harry tried the wand movement first in his paw, and then in his tail, and after a few minutes he was fairly sure he'd got it.

"Since a Boggart tries to cause fear," Remus resumed, "our greatest weapon against it is _laughter_. To laugh at something is to be less afraid of it, you see, and the Riddikulus charm allows you to force a Boggart's shape to change into something you find _amusing_."

He smiled. "Of course, a confused Boggart might turn into something amusing by mistake. If one tries to turn into a headless corpse and a flesh-eating slug at the same time, you might end up with a Boggart trying to scare two people at once by turning into half a slug. But the Riddikulus charm lets you force it – though you must concentrate on the change you want to make."

"So..." Ron began. "So if I got a spider, then I could try and make it change into a clown?"

"Oh, great," Fay Dunbar groaned. "Now a spider clown is going to be _my_ Boggart."

"I think that would be too large a change, Ron," Remus told him. "The charm is easier if the change you're making is small but funny."

He paused. "Though I must ask if anyone thinks that their worst fear may be _particularly_ dangerous. If you think it is, you may come over and speak to me privately at some point in the next few minutes. Harry, if you would?"

Harry followed Remus into the corner of the staff room, a little unsure.

"Harry, I have to ask you," Remus began. "Do you think your greatest fear is Lord Voldemort?"

"Well… no," Harry replied, shaking his head. "The last thing he did that I know of was implode, and I think there's also some bits of his soul somewhere, but apart from that… no. It might be a troll?"

Remus nodded. "I can see why that might be the case."

* * *

Two or three of the Gryffindors went over to talk privately, and Professor Lupin discussed it with them. Harry didn't listen, instead watching the Boggart-wardrobe as it rattled, and wondered how to make a troll funnier.

Perhaps if you shone a light at it and it froze in place?

Eventually, though, everyone was ready and had their wands out.

"Neville, I think we'll go with you first," Remus decided. "Are you ready?"

Neville nodded, a little hesitantly, then nodded a second time.

"Alohomora!" Remus incanted, sending a jet of light at the wardrobe. The door burst open, and out came a gaunt-looking woman with thick, shining dark hair and heavily hooded eyes. She looked familiar, like Harry had seen her before.

In the quiet, Harry just about heard Remus quietly say "Oh, bugger".

"YOU!" Neville bellowed, then turned and darted for his bag.

Startled enough he wasn't sure how to react, Harry watched as Neville reached into his bag, pulled out an iron bar about two feet long, and swung it at the woman like a cricket bat.

"Riddikulus!" Remus snapped, and when the bar connected there was a loud _BONG_ sound. Little birds circled the woman's head, and she wobbled around a bit before falling straight over backwards.

"Blimey, Neville, what was that?!" Dean demanded.

"That's – Bellatrix Lestrange!" Neville replied, panting. "I… wait..."

He blinked, stepping back. "No, it's a Boggart, isn't it?"

"That was a _hell_ of a reaction," Seamus said.

The Boggart _cracked_, changing shape, and a bloodstained, bandaged mummy was walking slowly towards Parvati.

* * *

Having lots of people around might have been helpful because it was confusing the Boggart, but it was also kind of confusing for Harry as well. One minute the Boggart was a mummy that tripped over its own bandages, as Parvati cast her own Riddikulus, and then the next minute it was a giant bloodstained eye.

"Riddikulus," Fay called, and the eye suddenly had a big eyepatch on it. Then it turned into a rat, which Sally-Anne Perks stopped with another Riddikulus charm that made it chase its own tail in a circle.

"Not really sure how that one's funny," Ron muttered.

"Probably funny to her," Dean replied.

"Ron!" Remus instructed, and Ron took a step forwards.

The Boggart changed with another _crack_, this time into a giant spider over a foot long with big bristly legs, and Ron swallowed visibly before raising his wand.

"Riddikulus," he called, and the spell sparked a little before fizzling. "Riddikulus!"

The second one worked, and instead of bristly insect-like-legs the spider suddenly had eight little hoofed legs. It made a _clopaclopaclopa_ sound as it tried to walk, tripping over because the new legs couldn't move the same way, and Remus sent Dean forwards to replace Ron.

"My first idea wasn't very funny," Ron admitted, as the Boggart focused on Dean instead. "Maybe that's why it didn't work?"

The Boggart turned into a disembodied hand, which flipped over and began moving a lot like a spider or a crab. Dean cast the same charm everyone else had been casting, which caught the hand in a mousetrap, and then it was Harry's turn to be called forwards.

* * *

The sudden transformation surprised Harry as much as anyone else. One moment the Boggart was a hand in a mousetrap, then the next it ballooned outwards into something so big that some people yelped as they were pushed against walls and Harry had to scramble backwards.

It was hidden in a cloud of smoke for a moment, and then the cloud faded away to reveal a great big dragon. Much larger than Harry was and even a bit bigger than Nora, big enough that it barely fit in the staff room even curled up, and with red scales so deep they were almost black.

It was sitting on a hoard of gold and gems, swords and leatherbound books, and pitiless green eyes regarded Harry for a moment before the big dragon growled. Smoke boiled up towards the ceiling from between long fangs – smoke touched by a hint of flame at the back of its throat – and it shifted slightly, all four paws clutching tightly onto parts of the hoard.

There was a Remembrall in the pile, and a little griffin statue, and a fine clockwork watch – all three of them underneath the dragon's nearest paw.

Suddenly feeling sick, Harry looked up to the other dragon's forehead, and he saw a lightning-bolt scar there.

"**Mine,"** the dragon – the _other Harry_ – growled, wings flexing slightly, and a possessive light shone in its eyes. **"All mine."**

For a long moment, Harry didn't know how to react. It wasn't that he didn't have any ideas what to do – he wanted to shout at the other him, say this wasn't him, that it was wrong. He wanted to attack, to stop it… to somehow show that this was _wrong…_

This other him was making him feel small-

-and that was what made him realize what he had to do.

"Riddikulus!" Harry shouted, pointing his wand at his double's eyes in case it mattered, and with a sudden _whoosh_ the big red-black dragon vanished.

Mostly.

What was left was a dragon about six inches long, sitting on top of a pile of chocolate biscuits.

"**Mine!"** it declared again, but this time it was much squeakier.

Seamus snorted, and the Boggart turned its attention to him and transformed into a banshee. Harry gratefully stepped back, and Remus clapped him on the wing shoulder as Seamus made the banshee-Boggart lose her voice.

"Good work, Harry," the Marauder told him. "That's a more grown-up sort of fear, and you clearly didn't expect it. That's why a Boggart is still dangerous to even a trained witch or wizard working alone."

Harry nodded, swallowing.

He looked back to the middle of the room as Hermione stepped forwards, and the Boggart changed into Professor McGonagall.

"I never thought I would have to say this, Miss Granger," the Boggart-McGonagall said primly. "But, since you have failed all your exams, you will be expelled from Hogwarts-"

"Riddikulus!" Hermione yelped, sounding desperate.

McGonagall went silent for a moment. "Issmay angergray, oday otnay indfay isthay usingay!"

If Hermione's giggle was a bit hysterical, Harry was hardly going to mention it, and then Neville moved past her with his wand held ready.

The Boggart changed back into Bellatrix Lestrange, and less than a second later Neville cast his spell. "Riddikulus!"

At first Harry didn't even notice the change, until the Boggart-Bellatrix swept her arm up to cast a spell with a delighted cackle. Then he saw that her wand had been replaced with a large carrot, and once he noticed that he spotted more carrots spilling out of her sleeves.

The sight was absurd enough that about half the class started to laugh, and the Boggart trembled for a moment before exploding into a cloud of smoke.

"Well done, everyone!" Remus announced, as the smoke cleared. "Boggarts often form in wizarding dwellings, sort of condensing out of the ambient negativity, so you may well need to deal with more than one in your adult life. Always remember to have someone with you, and remember the Riddikulus charm, and you will all do well."

Harry did feel pleased, but he also felt a bit like he had after discovering the Mirror of Erised – like he'd found out something deep about himself, something he hadn't thought about until that moment.

He probably wasn't the only one. Though everyone had also found out that Neville's first reaction to seeing a dark witch was to try and club them with the metal bar he used to train his arm strength.

The one that really puzzled him was Dean's Boggart, until Dean explained that he'd watched a movie about 'the Addams family' at Christmas back in 1991 and the hand thing in the film had really freaked him out.

* * *

AN:

So that's Creatures with the Bionic Professor (yes, he canonically has mecha-limbs) and Runes.

Then Potions with a Snape turned all the way down to "snide", and the Boggart.

Really, between the Mirror of Erised, the ability to gain an Animagus form, and the Boggart, Hogwarts is all about personal revelations.


	38. A Night Clubbing

Perhaps fortunately, the lessons in their other returning subjects were a bit less about surprisingly insightful looks into the minds of their classmates.

Instead, it tended to be more to do with things like witch hunts in History, or the different types of comet in Astronomy, or modifications of the spells they already knew in Charms. It was interesting to know that you could cast a modified form of the _Lumos_ spell so that it hung around in the air, instead of needing to use your wand like a torch, though it was a bit of a difficult spell to get right.

The fact that people kept accidentally flash-blinding one another when they were practicing didn't help.

* * *

A bit more than a week into the autumn term, the sign-up sheets for school clubs and societies went up. The sheet for the Gryffindor Quidditch tryouts went up as well, with a note that they were looking for a Seeker – something which Ginny signed up for immediately, before asking if she could borrow a Nimbus 2001 – and crowds formed as first-years asked their older housemates for advice on what clubs were like.

Neville was in the queue as well, but Dean wasn't – he already had the club he wanted – and Ron was only there for long enough to sign up to the Quidditch tryouts just in case.

"You realize that if you join the team, and _Ginny_ joins the team, and Fred and George _stay_ on the team, it's going to be Team Weasley by simple majority, right?" Dean asked. "That wouldn't happen in football… usually, anyway."

"Yeah," Ron agreed. "But I don't think we've won a game in years without at least one Weasley on the team."

Harry sniggered, buttering a croissant. "Has Gryffindor _played_ a game in years without at least one Weasley on the team?"

"Maybe," Ron replied, vaguely, as Harry breathed gently on the croissant to melt the butter. "Maybe back before Fred and George joined. And if Charlie was off sick."

Draco's voice interrupted them.

"There's a _what_ club?" he asked, sounding amused. "Potter, why on _Earth_ would you start an Unusually Shaped club?"

"It's a society," Harry corrected. "It's because there are some problems which people like Tanisis or Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail don't notice until they run into them themselves, and I thought it would be good if we could all share what problems we're having so they don't come as a surprise."

"If it's a non-humans club, just call it that and stop pretending," Draco advised.

"But Harry _is_ human," Luna Lovegood contributed. "Or, at least, I think he is."

Draco looked around to see who was talking, and sneered. "Go away, Loony."

"No, I think you're thinking of that Defence professor who's a wolf," Luna corrected. "And his name is _Moony_, or at least that's what Professor Dumbledore said and I don't think he'd lie about something like that."

She smiled pleasantly.

For a moment, Draco looked like he couldn't decide what to say out of several different things, and he rolled his eyes before dismissing Luna.

"Why are you bothered, anyway, Malfoy?" Ron asked. "Just don't go if you don't like the sound of it."

"It's a Slytherin thing," Blaise said, sitting down next to Ron. "The idea is, he thinks your club is bad and you should feel bad. But he can't just say that."

"How come _you_ can just say that, then?" Dean asked.

"It's a distraction," Blaise explained, getting up again. "I'm actually here to steal the marmalade."

"You what?" Ron demanded. "Hey!"

"You're not _having_ marmalade, Ron," Harry pointed out.

"Yeah, but I _might_," Ron countered.

"Ron, you're having sausages and beans," Dean said.

"It's the principle of the thing," Ron shrugged.

"Isn't that just the headmaster?" Fred asked. "I've heard that principal is American for headmaster."

"I'm _pretty_ sure they speak English in America," Ginny contributed. "But I could be mistaken."

"And I'm pretty sure you're mistaken," George told her. "They use words like sidewalk, and when they say pants they _mean_ trousers."

"It's completely different," Fred agreed, sagely. "They're almost as bad as the French."

Harry looked up, and noticed that Draco had left at some point during the conversation.

"I'm surprised he didn't say anything about the _other_ club I'm going to try to run," he admitted.

"Probably just noticed that first one and came straight over to try and make fun of you," Ron suggested. "Any idea where Hermione is?"

"No, but she was looking kind of tired last night," Harry said. "Maybe she's sleeping in."

"Yeah, probably," Ron decided. "Actually, it _is_ Sunday, are you heading off to Fort William today?"

"Probably," Harry agreed. "The weather looks good, so hopefully it'll be easy to not get my library books wet."

"I'm kind of looking forward to when we can go down to Hogsmeade, myself," Dean told them, as Neville sat down. "I've been to Diagon Alley, but a whole magical village is going to be new… especially a magical sweet shop."

"Well, if you're into magical sweets, we could see what we can do," Fred said, breaking off from the discussion with Ginny and his twin about how silly it was that Americans used the words biscuit and cookie completely differently to the way British people did, which was presumably important somehow. "You don't mind being a taste tester, do you?"

"Oh, is Dean interested in being a guinea pig?" George asked, also breaking off from the other conversation and leaving Ginny having one on her own, until Luna and Tanisis came over to make up the numbers.

"I don't think he's interested in being a guinea pig," Fred replied.

"Shame," George sighed. "We'll have to leave the Guinea Pig Gummy Pigs until we find someone else. What about the Tasty Toffees?"

"What kind of magic do Tasty Toffees have?" Dean asked, interested despite himself.

"They taste nice," Fred told him. "Just that. We're still working on improvements."

"It'd be a lot easier if we could come up with names that didn't involve alliteration," George confided.

* * *

After the dust had settled and all the scheduling was worked out, it was the Quidditch tryouts that came first.

Harry went to see them, partly to watch and partly to lend out his Nimbus 2001 to Ginny – who didn't have one of her own – so she would have a good chance. Neville, Dean and Hermione came as well, and Hermione checked her watch as she sat down.

"Four," she announced, mostly to herself. "Good, that's a nice round number."

"Is nice round numbers an Arithmancy thing?" Dean asked.

"I think most numbers have _some_ meaning in Arithmancy," Harry replied. "But four is the only number where it has the same number of letters as the number itself."

Dean counted under his breath for a few seconds, then nodded. "Yeah, so it is. Is that the kind of thing you do in Arithmancy?"

"No, that's from a book I read in primary school," Harry told him. "It was trying really hard to make numbers interesting, and that one just stuck in my head."

"It's not part of Arithmancy," Hermione said. "Arithmancy is about the numbers, not the words we've given the numbers so we can say them out loud. Arithmancy is the same whether you're saying four, _quatre_, _cuatro_ or whatever. That's French and Spanish, by the way."

"That makes sense, yeah," Neville agreed. "So Arithmancy is the only subject that doesn't involve words?"

"It involves words later on," Hermione hedged. "I read some of a book on advanced Arithmancy, and it says that you can use Arithmantic equations to work out how a word will affect the spell you're casting. When you get really good you can do it sort of backwards, and use it to calculate what word would be best for the spell you need – so we could try and work out how to say _what_ language we need, for the _Xenographia_ spell."

"That would be really useful," Harry said, then movement caught his attention. "Oh – I didn't know Colin Creevey was interested in being on the Quidditch team as well. It looks like there's three people who want to be the Seeker, or four if you count Cormac."

"Kind of a lot," Neville pointed out. "I wouldn't want to be Seeker this year even if I was any good. You've given whoever it is some big boots to fill, Harry."

Harry looked down at his paws. "I don't think most boots fit me."

"You know what I meant," Neville twitted him. "Anyway, how is this different from football tryouts in the Muggle world?"

"It's pretty similar, though not really the _same_," Dean replied, thinking. "Sometimes people will be obviously better as strikers or wingers or defenders or whatever, but most roles in football are fundamentally about being able to kick the ball. So it's like everyone's a Chaser, in Quidditch terms, except the goalkeeper."

Neville nodded.

"Other games are even more like that, though," Dean went on. "So with cricket, everyone's the same, though I think you can swap out bowlers for good batsmen. Most popular Muggle games don't have such completely different roles like Quidditch has."

As they watched, Oliver Wood threw golf balls in all directions. As there were so many Seekers to try out, everyone had a go at once, and after ten minutes or so the prospective Gryffindor Seekers compared how many balls each one of them had. Ginny definitely had more, and Colin was complaining about something with his hands waving wildly when Oliver shook his head.

"...in hindsight, it's not nearly as interesting when we can't hear what's being said," Harry said.

"Don't you already know?" Neville asked. "I don't remember this happening quite this way last time, but..."

"No, this looks like a new idea Oliver had," Harry answered, as Cormac joined the other three Chasers and all four of them got into a formation facing the nearest goal hoops… the ones where Ron was floating on his own Nimbus broom.

The prospective Seekers were all floating high above the action, but Oliver Wood was even higher. He blew his whistle, sending the Chasers on the attack against Ron, and ten seconds later Ron just about managed to deflect the Quaffle before it went through the middle hoop.

"They're going a bit slower than normal," Harry said quietly. "At least, slower than I remember. Maybe it's to get him warmed up?"

"Probably," Dean agreed. "If you had a really good Chaser team and a really good Keeper team they could practice fairly against one another, but a really good Chaser team training a new Keeper would just be kind of demoralizing."

* * *

Some minutes later, Ron was at about half of goal-attempts saved – Dean had started taking notes – when Harry saw a little flicker of movement drop down from where Oliver was circling.

"I think Oliver just dropped a golf ball," he supplied.

"Oh, I get it," Dean realized. "Clever."

Harry tracked the golf ball as it dropped, and it was at about the level of the stands when Colin belatedly realized what was going on and dropped into a dive. Ginny and the other Seeker hopeful dove as well, but none of them reached the golf ball before it hit the ground and they all had to break off.

"So it's about paying attention to more than one thing at a time," Hermione said. "And if I was doing it I'd have said they needed to say what the score was, as well, so they can't just watch Oliver all the time."

"Wonder how long this is going to be, though," Neville said. "What's the time?"

"About half past four," Hermione supplied. "I'd be happy if we stayed until six or so and then went to eat, if I spend an hour eating that lines up nicely."

"Do you need to timetable everything?" Dean asked, chuckling. "Even the stuff that isn't during a lesson?"

"Yes," Hermione replied. "It's because of the thing I can't talk about."

"Does that count as talking about the thing you can't talk about?" Neville mused. "I mean, you're not talking about _it_, but you're talking about not talking about it."

"I think talking about not talking about something isn't the same as talking about it," Dean frowned. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to say you weren't able to talk about it, so you'd just have to be completely silent, but then other people would talk about how you couldn't talk about the thing you couldn't talk about and that would qualify as…"

He stopped. "Great. Now my eyes have gone crossed."

"Any idea if the Smiths are going to start doing Quidditch?" Neville asked. "A pair of Beater twins have worked well for Gryffindor so far."

"Not sure, really," Harry shrugged. "I could ask them if they decide they qualify for the society, though."

"Actually, do Animagus forms count for that?" Hermione said, looking over at Harry. "And that reminds me, I need to work out what the best lunar cycle is for attempting the Animagus process… maybe Professor McGonagall can help."

"Or Professor Sinistra," Harry suggested. "She _is_ the Astronomy professor."

* * *

Eventually, Oliver Wood decided that Ginny showed the most promise, though he told both her and Colin to come to training so they could properly practice competing against another Seeker.

Cormac seemed a bit disgruntled by the whole result, especially since Oliver also decided that Ron showed enough promise to be a reserve Keeper, but Harry supposed that Cormac was still the only person they had as reserve Chaser or even reserve Beater. So he still had a back-up role for five out of the seven positions.

The first meeting of the Unusually Shaped Society was that evening, after dinner, so Harry made sure to eat enough before heading to the classroom he'd been told they should use.

He was the first one there, which gave him a bit of time to look around and see what was in it. There were piles of decades-old homework in one corner of the room, mostly endless essays on History of Magic, but the other equipment around the room seemed to be for something else entirely – pens and pencils, set squares and other geometry tools, and some slanted tablets for writing on as well.

Some of the discarded parchments included sketches of a bat's wing, compared to the wing of a bird, and Harry wondered if it was for studying Transfiguration.

"Is this the right place?" Flopsy asked, getting Harry's attention. "I hope we've got the right time…"

"We probably have!" Mopsy agreed. "Look, there's Harry!"

"But there's nobody else here," Flopsy worried. "Maybe we're early?"

"That's fine, don't worry," Harry assured her. "This is still the first time, so we're kind of working out what will work properly."

"Great!" Cottontail said, the triplets' tail wagging happily. "Where should we sit?"

"Anywhere will do," Harry answered. "I'm going to see if one of the teachers like Professor McGonagall can spare some time to sort out some chairs or bean bags or something, but I didn't really think of it before."

* * *

Over the course of the next ten to fifteen minutes, the other students Harry had been expecting turned up. June was first, padding into the room and giving first Harry and then the Barloses a quick nod, and then the Smith twins slipped into the room as a pair of foxes.

"I don't remember seeing them at the feast," Cottontail said at that, tilting her head a little. "Are pets allowed?"

"They're allowed," Harry assured her.

He looked closely. "That one's Taira's, and that one's Anna's. You can tell because you always see Taira with the vixen and Anna with the dog fox."

Taira's tongue lolled out in a laugh, and June held in a snigger.

"Is there a joke we're not getting?" Mopsy asked.

"I think I've got it, but I'm not telling," Flopsy giggled.

"Aww, come on, sis," Mopsy whined. "Tell us!"

Flopsy kept giggling, and the Smiths jumped up onto one of the desks before curling up as neatly matched rolls of orange-and-white fur.

Harry wondered if they ever slept that way down in the Slytherin dorm rooms. Sleeping in a bed where the pillow was bigger than you were and the duvet was the size of a house sounded like fun.

Then, finally, the door opened and let in three Ravenclaws at once.

Luna came first, holding open the door for Tiobald, and he wheeled his chair in before spinning it fluidly around and backing it into a parked position. Tanisis came through last, sitting in a convenient spot, and Luna let the door close before sitting between them.

"Okay, I think that's everyone," Harry said. "Is there anyone I'm forgetting?"

"What about my brother?" Anna asked.

The Barloses jumped, all startled at once, and whirled to look at the table.

"Where did you come from?" Cottontail demanded.

"And where did..." Mopsy began, then trailed off as Flopsy started to giggle.

Tyler crouched, then jumped off the desk as a fox and landed in his human shape.

"We can only really do that once with each person, but it can be _so_ worth it," he announced, offering his hand. "Tyler Smith."

"Anne Smith," his sister supplied, then went back to fox-form and offered her paw.

"It was the smell," Flopsy reminded her sisters, as the three of them shook first hand and then paw. "I think you must have smelled it as well, but you didn't work it out."

"Yeah, now I'm looking for it it's obvious," Cottontail admitted. "There's just two scents instead of four. Anyway, I'm Cottontail, and these are my sisters Flopsy and Mopsy."

Tiobald whispered something to Luna.

"This is Tiobald," Luna told them. "He understands English, but speaking it is a bit of a problem for a selkie – he does know sign language, if that helps."

Harry decided that he should probably learn to read sign language, if he could find the time.

Maybe there was one of those translation sweets for it?

"It sounds like we're all here," he said. "This is kind of the first time I've tried organizing something like this, so this isn't really going to be very formal… the first thing we should do is each say hello and a bit about ourselves, I think. Youngest first?"

"When's your birthday?" Mopsy asked Tiobald. "Ours is a few days after new year, our uncle says it's kind of hard to think up two presents for us in a row."

Tiobald replied with a few slow signs, tapping his left thumb and then his left little finger before clenching both hands and knocking them together, and followed that with a two-fingers-up sign twice.

"August twenty-second," Luna told them.

"Oh, okay, you're already twelve," Mopsy realized. "Neat. Uh… you want to start, Flopsy?"

"Sure," Flopsy agreed. "So, obviously, we're a three-headed dog. If you're kind of confused about how to talk about us, I suppose the thing to remember is just that we have different names but we're really close friends."

"Usually," Mopsy contributed.

Flopsy gave her sister an affectionate lick, then resumed. "Anyway, our mums are from Greece, but she moved to join our dads here in Britain, so we've grown up here. That does mean we speak a bit of Greek, but I don't think our accents are very good."

"It's really amazing that we get to come here," Cottontail took up the thread. "I couldn't believe it, and I don't think Flopsy or Mopsy could either. It still doesn't feel real, even though we've been learning magic for more than a week now."

* * *

Once Flopsy and Cottontail had finished, Harry checked with Mopsy to see if she had anything she wanted to add.

"No, but thank you for asking," she said, nodding slightly.

"Sometimes people forget we're separate," Cottontail agreed. "There's a lot of, um, agreeing, you could say? Going on, because it's easier if we move in a coordinated way."

Tiobald signed something, much more quickly than before – quickly enough Harry couldn't begin to follow.

"That's interesting," Luna reported. Or said. It was hard to tell.

The girls padded over to sit somewhere that looked convenient, and Tiobald wheeled himself forwards a little. He signed a question to Luna, and she hummed.

"Mermish or sign language, whichever you want," she told him. "Just make sure to leave gaps if it's Mermish, so I can tell them!"

Tiobald bobbed his head, and began speaking.

Mermish was an odd sort of language, kind of screechy, and Harry wondered if it was an echolocation thing.

"I grew up in the lake by the castle," Luna repeated, then glanced at her housemate. "Is that how you'd rather I do it? Or change it to third-person?"

The selkie signed something, then kept going.

"I've heard that humans find the water cold, but we don't really notice it – I've always lived there. I thought it might be hot up here, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be. None of my family had left the lake before, at least none of them who I could still talk to."

Luna frowned, and added that there were mermaids in the Mediterranean as well, so maybe that had something to do with it?

"If anyone in my family is from that part of the world, I don't know about it," Tiobald admitted. "Everyone has the same family name down there, we're Clan MacUalraig, though I've heard that there might be humans with the same name around this part of Scotland as well. I wonder who got the idea first?"

Anna giggled. "Maybe both of them came up with exactly the same name?"

"What's most different about being on dry land?" Harry asked. "I was sort of wondering if it was like flying, because you can move in three dimensions, but then again you can't go as far."

"It is odd being able to go such a long distance in a straight line," Tiobald agreed. "And to look up at something and think, oh, wait, I can't just go straight there, I have to use stairs."

He tapped the wheels of his chair. "And even though this can go up stairs, it's kind of inconvenient."

"Oh!" Harry realized. "That's something we could help you with… or try, anyway. We could ask Professor McGonagall if you could have your own broom, once you've learned to fly, and that would let you get around better."

Tiobald's hands moved so fast that Luna shook her head. "Sorry, Tiobald, I didn't get that?"

Instead of signing again, he said it in Mermish, and Luna smiled. "Thank you, that sounds wonderful. I hope I'm able to fly… maybe I can jump off the broom and go diving?"

* * *

There were a few questions after that. Tyler was particularly interested in hearing about the giant squid – apparently it was quite nice, really – while when Anna asked they found out that the main sport played by Clan MacUalraig was something that sounded more like rugby than anything.

Except there were more than a dozen balls, usually made to be only a little heavier than the water, and the team which had more of them in their goal area at the end of the game was the loser.

"Maybe that could be played on a broom?" June asked. "How many spare Quaffles do we have at Hogwarts?"

Harry wrote down a note about that, in case he forgot. It sounded like the sort of thing Dean would be interested in.

Then it was June's turn, and though Harry had heard most of it before he listened anyway.

Cottontail happily announced that her uncle was great when June mentioned the bit about how she'd learned English, and that naturally led to a bit of a pause while Harry explained about how Fluffy had been working at Hogwarts as a guard two years ago. Then June mentioned some of the trouble she'd had with doing the writing in exams, and with casting spells in tricky situations, and the Barlos sisters nodded along with that.

"I don't think it'll be as hard for us," Flopsy supplied. "Because both our wands work for two of us, so any one of us can cast a spell while one of the others holds the wand. But if we're in a fight, I think it'd be Mopsy who has to do spellcasting."

"Do spells work for Tiobald?" Harry asked.

"Oh, that's actually really cool," Luna told them. "See, Mermish is a magical language where everything translates directly to English word-for-word. You can actually write a poem in Mermish and it'll still work _and_ rhyme in English! That means it's magically equivalent, or at least it is in simple tests."

"That _is_ cool," Anna said. "Does that work for other languages?"

Tiobald flicked through a few quick signs.

"Ask someone from a different country's waterways," Luna supplied.

She took out her own wand, screeched something in Mermish, and the wand promptly lit up.

"Nox," she added, and it went out.

"I'd try the same thing with Dragonish, but I can't speak Dragonish unless I'm looking at another dragon," Harry supplied. "The mirror doesn't work."

"Dragonish?" Tiobald asked, via Luna.

"We'll get to me eventually," Harry shrugged. "I did want to ask, though, June – what was it like going back home for the holidays?"

"Probably a lot like when you went back home to yours," June answered. "Everyone found it useful that I could make a light from my wand… well, most of us did. My aunt thought it was cheating, but my young cousins thought chasing the light was a great game."

"You got to cast magic at home?" Tanisis asked. "Huh. Some dogs have all the luck."

"I'm a wolf, not a dog," June pointed out. "Though admittedly wolves and dogs are pretty similar."

"Yeah, that's not what it was like for most of us," Harry said. "I got to cast a bit of magic when I was doing practice with Remus, but that might have been because he was already the Defence professor by then. Tiobald might be able to cast magic over the holidays, though, since he's even more at Hogwarts than June is."

"And it would be quite hard for an owl with his first warning to reach him at the bottom of a lake," Luna said serenely. "Unless the Ministry used one of their special post cormorants."

Tanisis covered her mouth with her paw. "The Ministry has post cormorants?"

"That's what an article in the latest Quibbler says," Luna informed her. "So it must be true."

"It does?" Harry asked, thinking about his own most recent Quibbler. "I haven't seen it."

"Of course not, I haven't sent it to Daddy to publish yet," Luna explained. "Journalism is a calling."

* * *

Just as soon as it was certain that Tiobald was done, both Tyler and Anne bounded forwards.

"Okay, so we're fey!" Tyler announced. "Or kitsune. Either one works."

"Kitsune sounds better, though," Anne added. "There's been fox shifters in Britain for a while, which is where Dad comes from."

"Our mum's nisei," Tyler supplied. "That means her parents were Japanese, though they moved here ages ago. There's a lot more kitsune over in Japan and Korea and stuff."

Tiobald signed a quick question, which Luna informed them was about what the meaning of 'fey' was.

"Fey is kind of a catch-all term," Tyler said. "Some Beasts qualify, like Red Caps and stuff, but it also includes some types of near-humans like us."

"I mean, look at me!" Anna said, doing a twirl. "You'd hardly know I wasn't human!"

"What about me?" Tyler protested.

"Eh, it's obvious for you," Anne said, sticking her tongue out.

Harry got the same feeling he sometimes did with Fred and George, and to a lesser extent with Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail – these siblings, twins or triplets, knew one another so well they could just naturally fit a conversation together on the fly like they'd planned it out in advance.

It made him feel surprisingly sad, wondering what it would have been like if his parents had lived long enough that _he'd_ had a brother or sister. And whether they'd have turned into a dragon as well.

Although everyone in the room had already seen the change, first one twin and then the other demonstrated it – flowing smoothly from human-shape to fox-shape and back again, while explaining how each form felt just as natural as the other. They could even do something that an Animagus couldn't do, which was transform only a little bit, but it apparently was much less fun being a human with a tail than either a human without a tail or a fully-furry fox.

Flopsy asked what their house was like, and Harry was interested to hear that it sounded a lot like a Hobbit-hole – dug into the ground a bit – and that they had some small and cozy rooms for fox-form kitsune to curl up in if they felt like it, as well as the more normal collection of human-sized rooms and things.

Apparently they also had a few Japanese customs carried over from their maternal grandparents, like eating sushi, but Tyler said that he was the only one who liked proper Inarisushi. (Apparently in Japan it was something kitsune were supposed to stereotypically like, but Anna didn't like tofu and much preferred a version made with an omlette.)

"And, yeah, we don't have as many problems with our not-human-ness as most of you," Anna said, coming to what was probably a conclusion.

"Basically because we can pretend we're not," Tyler nodded along. "And we only use our fox-forms or the little bits of other fey magic we know for the most serious purposes."

"Like if it would let us set up a really good prank," Anna agreed. "Or catch criminals, I did that last year."

"Or to hide," Tyler pointed out.

"Or to hide," Anna reiterated. "Oh, or because shaking yourself dry is quicker than using a towel."

"Or when Anna's feeling cold at night," her brother said. "Or when _I'm_ feeling cold at night."

"Don't forget doing it when one of us wants to pretend they've got a pet," the vixen mused.

"Or when we feel like it," Tyler concluded.

It was hard not to smile.

* * *

Harry had heard quite a lot of what Tanisis had to say from Ron and Ginny, so that wasn't quite as interesting for him, but he listened in anyway while wondering what he was going to say about himself.

Oddly enough, he'd had one of the most normal childhoods of anyone there… or he thought he had, at least. It had certainly felt normal when he was going through it.

Maybe that was the point, though, to talk about that sort of thing so they all knew where they were different? And if none of them had had anything normal, they wouldn't know what to say.

Harry thought about that again, then thought about the fact that the only completely human person in the club was Luna Lovegood, and wondered if maybe he should have asked someone else to come along.

It probably didn't matter, though.

And there were some new things that Tanisis mentioned, like how she'd made sure by careful practice that she'd trained herself out of the normal sphinx response to a wrongly answered riddle. It reminded Harry of his own occasionally-insistent hoarding instincts, and it sounded like Tanisis had been very sensible about it.

* * *

The last introduction was the one where Harry talked about himself, which felt a bit awkward. It was sort of a Lockhart-y thing to do, or it felt a bit like just boasting, to just stand in front of people and explain how things had gone for him. Even if they all found it both interesting and odd that he hadn't realized being a dragon was unusual until his eleventh birthday.

It helped a bit that everyone there said he'd been really helpful because he'd been involved in letting them have wands (though that was another thing to be uncomfortable about), and since only Tyler, Anna and Luna _could_ have gone out in the Muggle world (and Luna hadn't done that much) there was a lot to talk about there as well.

After about ten minutes, Harry had promised to bring copies of several of the books he liked most to the next club, and they'd decided that they probably didn't need to do the club every week. Luna suggested they try it every other week, which sounded like a good idea, and Harry asked Tanisis and June particularly what they thought was the most important thing to talk about for the rest of this one – what thing they thought was the most important thing to know, if they'd had that advice at the start of last year.

"Well… beds is one thing," June volunteered. "It took months to get the beds sorted properly for me."

"I have a pool," Tiobald explained, via Luna. "It helps me rest my lungs and use my gills, but Professor Flitwick told me to let him know if anything should be changed."

"Oh, writing!" Tanisis said firmly. "Writing is the _hardest_ thing."

"I have to agree," June decided. "I had a lot of trouble finishing my exam questions, I never seemed to have the time..."

* * *

Harry's other new club had taken a bit longer to sort out, so there was a gap of a few days after the first Unusually Shaped meeting when Harry's main concerns were keeping up with his homework, lessons in general, and the other things involved with going to school.

He also made time to mention the game that Tiobald had talked about. Sadly it seemed that the castle only had four Quaffles at the moment, but Madam Hooch was interested enough in the idea that she suggested they order another dozen or so from a Quidditch supplies shop.

"I have always found it a shame that so few people can play Quidditch in a year," she said. "After teaching everyone to fly it can be such a pity that most people don't use it, and then when they do need to fly they've quite lost the knack."

Harry supposed part of that was that flying was quite easily noticed by Muggles, at least for people who weren't dragons.

"I think it's kind of like cycling," Dean volunteered. "Muggles learn that in primary school, but once they know it's usually either a long way to cycle to get anywhere useful, if they live in the country, or if they live somewhere like London it's basically a complicated way of getting hit by a car."

Harry snorted.

"I don't think there are any sports games on bicycles, though, are there?" he asked. "I think Bicycle Rugby would be kind of painful and expensive."

"They probably do it at Eton," Dean shrugged. "Ask Justin, maybe?"

Harry was thinking about doing just that when he spotted something flying down towards him from the castle.

It was definitely a bird, and as it got closer Harry realized it was Percy. He couldn't really see the flash of red on Percy's crest from below, but it was easy enough to work out that a heron around Hogwarts had to mean Percy.

Flaring his wings and landing quite daintily, Percy nodded to Madam Hooch before growing back to being Head Boy (instead of Head Heron). "Excellent. Glad I found you, Harry. Professor Dumbledore's sorry about the short notice, but he's hoping you might be available to talk today?"

Harry checked the time, and saw it was about half an hour until dinner started – though dinner usually lasted a couple of hours so people could go down whenever they wanted. "Yeah, the only homework I've got at the moment is a Charms essay, and I can do that after dinner. Does he mean now?"

"What he said to _me_ was 'as soon as possible'," Percy told him. "So probably, yes."

"Go ahead," Dean added, as Harry glanced at him.

Touched by Dean's quick agreement, Harry spread his wings. He tested them slightly, reminding himself that they were bigger than last year, then took off with a _whoosh_ of air.

Thirty seconds later he realized something he'd forgotten, banked around, and landed right back next to Percy again.

"What's the password?" he asked, feeling himself flushing slightly.

"Oh, of course," Percy said. "It's – ah, yes, Emandem."

The Head Boy pronounced it a bit strangely, but Harry realized that that was probably 'M&Ms', and thanked him before taking off to head to the Owlery.

* * *

As Harry climbed up the stairs to Dumbledore's office, the Headmaster greeted him.

"Ah, good evening, Aberforth!"

"Actually, it's Harry, sir," Harry said, poking his head over the lip of the stairway.

"Oh, bother," Dumbledore sighed. "It does such wonders when one gets it right. Please do keep this little error between us, Harry."

Harry agreed readily that that would be fine.

"How has your third year been going so far?" Dumbledore added, as Harry took a seat in one of the armchairs. Fawkes came flying over, managing to do so without anything so undignified as flapping his wings, and perched neatly on Harry's offered tail.

"All the new subjects are interesting," Harry answered. "I don't think any of them was quite like what I expected, but I'm learning a lot."

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced.

"I do want to ask about June, Tanisis, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail," Harry added. "Do you think it'd be possible for them to have some way to write faster? June said that she had trouble writing quickly enough in her exams, and I'm worried that that might be a problem for the others as well."

"It's always a pleasure to see someone who is so considerate of their schoolmates, no matter their house," the Headmaster told him. "And yes, it seems that writing faster or extra time may be the only options, though perhaps not… do you think this is a problem that Muggles have had to deal with? I do often find that, since there _are_ so many of them, they come up with good ideas before we wizards manage to do so."

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "But probably, because Muggles can't heal broken bones quickly. If someone broke an arm before they took their GCSEs then it wouldn't be fair to fail them because they couldn't write fast enough."

"I shall consult with Professor Burbage on the matter," Dumbledore said. "Now, as to the reason why I asked you here. Harry, I have been researching as best I can into Tom's life, and while the progress is slow I believe I should keep you informed as much as possible."

Harry nodded, understanding how serious the subject was, and Fawkes began to softly sing into the air of the study.

"A part of the key is the locket, you see," Dumbledore went on. "With the diary, it might be possible that it was simply something that Tom had to hand, but the locket… the locket appears to me to be Salazar Slytherin's locket."

"Slytherin?" Harry repeated – the locket had had a snake on it, certainly, but he hadn't imagined _that_. "The founder of Hogwarts? Where did he get that?"

"From a woman called Hepzibah Smith," Dumbledore said. "The full tale is sad, and I believe that he murdered her for them."

The Headmaster's usual smile was absent. "I am still piecing the puzzle together, Harry, and parts of it rely on memories I have not examined for decades. But if Tom's behaviour is consistent, I believe that another of his Horcruxes is the cup of Helga Hufflepuff."

Harry winced.

"Indeed, indeed," Dumbledore said. "We may have no choice but to destroy the cup, as well, which is a great shame – though it must be admitted that first it would be necessary to find it."

* * *

Harry felt quite disquieted for the rest of the day, and it was hard for him to focus on his Charms essay.

Thinking about Tom Riddle, or Voldemort, as being evil enough to split his soul like that had been bad enough. But when he now knew that he'd put some of his soul into a priceless historical artefact, and that he'd probably done it more than once to more than one historical artefact… in an odd way, it felt worse than 'just' making an evil ring to hold you to the world.

The worse thing, though, was that there might be no way to find where the cup actually was. Dumbledore had assured him that he was sure there was some way to sort the whole thing out, which did make Harry feel a bit better, but it still seemed like quite a big problem for a still-little dragon to be contemplating. And that was before even thinking about how _many_ horcruxes there were – there could be dozens, even, though that didn't seem _very_ likely because of how you apparently had to murder someone to make a Horcrux. And it seemed like Voldemort had relied on his thugs to do a lot of his killing.

Towards the end of the day, though, and with his essay finally finished – and after he'd rewritten the bit Hermione had said wasn't really up to snuff – Harry decided to go through his book collection looking for inspiration.

There were a lot of things he _could_ read, but after thinking about it Harry decided to curl up with _Redwall_ again. It was a fun book to read, and it was all about someone who didn't think he could deal with the dangers he was facing… going ahead and doing it anyway.

(Though only after getting hold of a magic sword and armour and stuff, because that was always helpful. Being a brave person from a humble background going to save the world was one thing, but going in unprepared was just silly.)

* * *

In the next day's Care of Magical Creatures class, they were told about and shown examples of the humble Flobberworm.

Harry got out his _Fantastic Beasts_ book, to check something, then put up his paw.

"Ah, Mr. Potter!" Professor Kettleburn said. "Yes, go ahead!"

"I was wondering why this is considered a magical creature, Professor," Harry explained. "In _Fantastic Beasts_ it says that the beasts that got concealed were the ones which were obviously magical, but a Flobberworm doesn't look obviously anything. If a Muggle found one _now_ they'd be confused, but if they hadn't been hidden away then I'm not sure they'd think they had to be magical."

"A fine question indeed, Mr. Potter, a fine question!" Professor Kettleburn announced. "A point to Gryffindor for incisive thinking! And the answer, why, the answer is that the Flobberworm is taxonomically illogical."

This didn't seem to explain anything to Harry, or indeed to anyone else. Even Hermione seemed a little confused, which was outside Harry's experience.

"Ah, I see I'll have to go into more detail!" the teacher smiled. "Well, back in the seventeen hundreds, a Muggle by the name of Linnaeus started to describe how animals fit together into categories – so for example a wolf and a dog are similar, and then a fox fits into a larger group, and so on! And all of those categories make sense for all Muggle animals – so feathers are only found on birds, and fur is only found on mammals, that sort of thing."

Dean put his hand up. "So does that mean that winged horses don't fit?"

"Exactly!" Professor Kettleburn said, mightily pleased. "Winged horses don't fit! It's one way we can tell they were created magically long ago, you see. So all magical beasts that are hidden away from Muggles are in at least one of two categories – either they don't fit into taxonomy properly, and the griffin is a good example of that, or they have a magical ability of their own that meant they _had_ to be hidden or else they'd give the whole game away like a shot!"

He nodded over to where Nora was sunning herself by the lakeside. "And dragons like our dear Nora there, and Mr. Potter himself of course, are both. In Mr. Potter's case, for example, he has external ears. No non-magical animal that isn't a mammal has those."

The Professor reached into the crate and pulled out a flobberworm, which flobbered a little. "The reason the Flobberworm is taxonomically illogical is a bit more complicated, but fortunately taking care of them isn't nearly so difficult – there's a reason they're one-X species. If you could all take hold of some lettuce?"

* * *

Humming to himself as the clock got close to seven, Harry checked that he had all three of his rulebooks stacked up on the table and plenty of paper and pencils.

They'd be using way too much for parchment to make sense, which had meant a trip to Fort William for paper, and the pile of special multi-sided dice had come from a shop in London over the summer.

Just when he was satisfied that everything was in place, there was a knock on the door.

"It's open," Harry called.

One of the Ravenclaw fourth-years peered around the door. "Hi, is this where the dungeons and dragons club is – oh, huh."

"That's right," Harry agreed.

"_You're_ the one running the D&D club?" the boy asked, sniggering. "And it's on the first basement floor… or, to put it another way, in the dungeons?"

Harry nodded again.

"Kind of a pity Nora isn't in here, or this really would be dungeons and dragons, plural," the Ravenclaw boy said. "Any idea how many people are coming?"

"There were half a dozen names on the sign up sheet," Harry answered. "Have you played this before?"

"Once, a couple of years ago," the boy said. "James Lively, by the way. And I know you're Harry Potter."

"Nice to meet you," Harry smiled.

* * *

There were a total of five people who showed up for the first session – Neville was one of them – and once everyone had Harry decided to explain the basic idea.

Two of the other students who'd decided to attend (Su Li and Colin) had never played before but had at least heard of the game, while Tanisis admitted that she didn't even know that and had mostly come along to see what it was going to be like.

"Well, the idea is that each of you plays as an adventurer," Harry said, doing his best to put it in a quick description. "So a swordsman, an archer, and a wizard, for example."

"So we're not all wizards and witches?" Su checked.

"You could be," Harry told her. "But you might have a bit of trouble, because this is a Muggle idea of what wizards are, so wizards are better at some things and swordsmen are better at other things."

"And what then, is there a game board?" Colin said.

"There can be," James answered him. "I don't think Harry has one, but when I played it once the person who was running it had little miniatures for the players. I'm not all that bad at Transfiguration, so maybe I could Transfigure us some."

"That would be great, actually," Harry smiled. "I don't think we've done that kind of thing yet. Anyway, _you_ all play as adventurers, and you have sheets which tell you how good they are at doing things – so how accurate they are with a bow, that kind of thing. And _I_ play as… kind of as the rest of the world that you travel through? Telling you what you see, and what there is to fight – or not fight."

"So what are the dice for?" Su asked. "I'm guessing we roll them to see how well we do?"

"Yeah, and we add the numbers on our sheets," Neville told her. "Or subtract them, sometimes. And Harry tells us how well we do."

"So, how do we start?" Tanisis asked.

"Oh, well, the first thing is that I tell you about where this is all happening," Harry explained, and expanded the map he'd drawn before putting it on the table. "There's about half a dozen different countries – that's Rohan, people from there are really good at horse riding, and that's where the elves live, for example."

"I don't think I want to be one of _those_," Su said. "They're nice enough, but..."

"Actually, I don't know about that," James pointed out. "Elves can Apparate, right?"

Neville was trying not to laugh.

"These elves are… kind of different," Harry tried. "Anyway, this is Nan Curunir, which is where the wizards Saruman and Gandalf train people in using magic – there's not many of them, and they use staffs instead of wands."

"That sounds cool," Colin declared. "I think I want to be one of them!"

"I'd rather be a Ranger," Neville said. "Or, wait, do those exist? Is that Numenor?"

"Rangers still exist," Harry told him. "But yes, that's Numenor. It's the home of the mightiest kingdom of Men."

"And women?" Su asked.

"And women," Harry confirmed. "They're all middle-ages-y, so they're usually ruled by kings, though. If you want a woman going on an adventure, you _could_ do someone from any part of the world, but your best bets are Rohan and the Elves..."

* * *

Even with Neville helping, it took a while for Harry to go through what all the places were and what people from them were like – especially when Neville didn't quite know everything either, because Harry's ideas for things going differently had changed the map. Like there still being a proper Elven kingdom in the West, around the Grey Havens, and how dragons lived in the north past the Lonely Mountain and in the south around the Sea of Nuln in Mordor.

Eventually, though, it seemed like everyone had at least enough of an idea to be going on with, and they got onto making their adventurers.

"So there's six ability scores," Harry started. "The first one is how strong you are, the second one is how quick your reactions are..."

"Can I have a look at the book?" James asked.

Harry said he could in a moment, and then did what he really should have done before anyone turned up – duplicated the book several times, so they had enough for everybody.

"The first bit is that you roll to see what your abilities are going to be," Harry resumed. "Some types of adventurer need to be tougher than others, so you'd want to be tough if your job was being at the front protecting everyone, and you'd want to be smart if you were standing at the back being a wizard."

"No, you'd want to be standing at the back being a wizard if you were smart," Tanisis said, which gave everyone the giggles.

"If you've got an idea of what you want to be, what you do then is you roll dice," Harry explained. "There's loads of ways to do it in the book, but some of them take ages and others just don't seem fair. So I had this idea..."

Rummaging through the dice, he picked out twenty-four six sided ones and put them in a box.

"You roll all of these at once, then you pick three for each ability score and add them together," he explained. "That way, you can have a couple of really good numbers."

Colin went first, rolling the dice with such gusto that some of them dropped off the table entirely.

"I'll get them," Neville volunteered, ducking down under the desk. "Hey, Colin, there's a six down here – no, two!"

"Really?" Colin asked, sounding tremendously excited.

* * *

If there was one thing that the first meeting of the D&D club proved, to Harry, it was that it took a lot longer to get things like this done in a group where everybody wanted to see everything that happened.

It had taken the whole evening to get it worked out what everyone wanted to play. Su had decided that being a warrior woman from Rohan sounded good, Tanisis had gone for an Elven archer – though Harry had regretfully explained that the elves in the rulebook weren't as good as the elves in the Lord of the Rings books.

Neville had decided on a Ranger of the North again, or the closest equivalent, and Colin had proudly announced that he was going to be playing a wizard who blew things up all the time.

The person who Harry knew least well, James, said that he'd be a Cleric – which Harry thought was probably good because they needed someone able to do healing things. They didn't have anyone sneaky, either, but that probably wasn't too much of a problem.

By the time all that was worked out, though, it was really time to head to bed because curfew was in ten minutes. Still, everyone had had a good time, and it sounded like everyone was looking forward to continuing next week.

Harry thought it was going very well.

* * *

AN:

Hogwarts continues to be a school, with clubs and stuff.


	39. Moonlit Plans

It always happened when Harry was at Hogwarts, but he was surprised how much it was possible for learning magic to become routine.

It wasn't boring, not at all, there was always something interesting to learn – Professor Flitwick, for example, taught them a charm to fold paper, and demonstrated how it could be a relatively simple _spell_ which could be made to do very complex _things_ if you had the focus to put it through the right set of instructions. Folding paper in half was just the start, and by the end of that lesson Hermione had turned a piece of red-and-white paper into a neat little crane shape according to the instructions.

Harry hadn't managed it quite that well, and the best he'd done was a boat, but it was still a neat result. And it was a good way to show how much it was important to have focus and care in magic.

Dean had managed to fold his paper into a very small cube which took him five minutes to tease apart again, which presumably in some way counted.

There was more homework than there'd been last year, but even with his two new clubs to replace Quidditch Harry found that he _did_ actually have a bit more free time – enough time to go to Fort William and pick up some new books, like _Green Mars_ for Ron and a story collection about Pern called _First Fall_, for himself.

_First Fall_ was actually a really neat read. There were lots of things that were more about the _setting_ than about the dragons themselves, like how the planet Pern had got its name (it was a bit like if you'd decided a place was Nice And Rather Lovely and then called it Narl) and how Ruatha Hold had been founded, but the thing which really caught Harry's attention and got him thinking was the one about how the last few survivors on the southern continent had been evacuated by the space navy – a space navy that sounded at least a _bit_ like the one in books like _The Ship Who Sang_ – and they'd completely missed not only everyone on the northern continent but the existence of flying, teleporting fire-lizards.

It did explain why Pern had been left alone, he supposed, but it was still fun to speculate.

* * *

Hermione asked them all – Harry, Ron, Neville, Dean and both Fred and George – to come to a meeting in a more-or-less random classroom one Sunday, and once they were all there she put a big lunar chart down on the table.

"Okay, so I've been thinking about this," she began. "And when our best choice is for timing."

She paused. "Or, rather, when the best choice of _some_ of us is for timing. Harry doesn't need to do it and I've mostly asked you two because you might have some advice."

"What kind of thing are you talking about?" Fred asked.

"It's a complete mystery, George," George replied. "There's no possible reason she could have for inviting this combination of people."

"Don't be silly," Hermione sighed. "We've been thinking about this for months."

"Thinking about what for months?" Fred asked.

George shrugged. "Because if you've been thinking about leaving our sister out of the Animagus thing, you're probably going to end up bat-bogeyed."

"She's got a point," Ron volunteered. "You're telling her if we're leaving her out."

"It's because I'm worried if she can do it," Hermione defended herself. "But I will talk to her about it, yes. Anyway."

She tapped the chart with her wand, making it expand. "As you might remember, the Animagus process means you need to keep a mandrake leaf in your mouth for a month from full moon to full moon – without swallowing it. Once you've done that, and when the sky's clear at the full moon, the potion can be prepared – it's not actually all that difficult-"

"Just to check," Neville said, raising his hand. "You do mean difficult by the standards of mortals, not difficult by the standards of people who get scores on exams higher than the highest score the examiners thought were possible?"

"Yes, yes, there's no unusual stirring and there's only three other ingredients," Hermione answered. "Anyway. Once the mixture's ready, you need to cast a spell at sunrise and sunset, and then you cast the spell again during a lightning storm and drink the potion."

She nodded towards Fred and George. "Fortunately, you can just go to Lake Victoria and do it there, where there's always a lightning storm."

"Right, so what's the problem?" Ron asked. "Fred and George have done it, so it can't be that hard."

"Are you suggesting we're not good at magic?" Fred asked.

George shook his head, sighing. "That's a vile slander, right enough."

"Think he'd change his mind if we turned him into a newt, George?" Fred asked.

Harry noticed with amusement that they'd each called the other George.

"No, I'm saying you're not always good at sticking to the plan you started with," Ron explained. "Remember when you said you'd make a memory improving potion?"

"...do you know, no, I don't remember that at all," Fred frowned. "Fred?"

"Not at all, Fred," George replied.

"Exactly," Ron said smugly.

"He's got us there," George admitted.

"Anyway," Hermione said, getting their attention again. "The full moons for the rest of the year are – there's one on the last day of September, and then there's one on the thirtieth of October. That's the day before Halloween, of course. After that the _next_ full moon is the twenty-ninth of November, which is a lunar eclipse, and after that it's after Christmas."

"So… oh, I see," Dean realized. "The lunar eclipse might make the magic go wrong, and anyway two of those periods have a big feast in the middle so it'd be hard to find the time for the spell."

"Yes, but I don't think we can get away during Halloween," Hermione clarified. "So we'd have to do the sensitization spell every day at sunrise and sunset until the next weekend, and that's if Sirius can take us to Lake Victoria."

"I'll see what he thinks?" Harry suggested, then reached into his pocket. "Actually, he might be up now, I'll check."

* * *

As the closest thing to expert opinion they had – even counting Fred and/or Fred – Sirius listened to their conundrum, then told them that basically they had a choice between getting it done early in Third Year or waiting until some time in 1994.

Including a lunar eclipse in consideration was 'batty, as in, the sort of thing Severus would come up with if you asked him because he thinks only the potion matters, that joke fell flat, forget about it', while he also happily pointed out that he was quite capable of getting the four of them down to Africa and back over the course of Halloween.

It _was_ a Hogsmeade day, after all.

"It is?" Dean asked. "I thought they didn't tell us more than a few days in advance."

"_I can spot patterns,"_ Sirius said proudly. _"Every time I was at school and Halloween fell on a Sunday, they let us go down there for it."_

Hermione counted under her breath.

"So… twice?" she asked. "One of which you were in first year and couldn't have gone anyway?"

"_Blimey, you lot haven't used the Marauder's Map at all, have you?"_ Sirius asked. _"We found passages leading down to Hogsmeade ages ago. One of them even comes out in the sweet shop."_

Ron snorted. "It's almost a pity we don't need them."

"_Of course you need them,"_ Sirius replied. _"How else are you going to be able to go into the sweet shop when it's _not_ a Hogsmeade weekend?"_

"I'm pretty sure we'd stick out like sore thumbs," Dean said. "On account of how Hogsmeade is a magical village, and we're children, and when Hogwarts is in session every magical child in the country is there."

"_I was going to mention Squibs, but you've got a point, they're usually at a Muggle school,"_ Sirius said. _"That explains how quickly James, Remus and I always got in trouble after sneaking down there. I always did wonder how they knew..."_

Harry snorted.

"_Anyway, if you're impatient then go for the October slot,"_ Sirius resumed. _"And either way, good luck."_

As the mirror returned to a simple reflection, Neville frowned.

"He didn't mention Peter Pettigrew," he observed.

"Yeah, he doesn't really," Harry answered. "He's able to talk about Peter now, but only if he has to. I think he once said that he's trying to have two versions of Hogwarts memories, accurate ones and ones where there's no Peter."

"I'd kind of like those," Ron muttered.

"Are you sure that's healthy?" Hermione asked. "It doesn't sound healthy."

Harry was about to say that Sirius was an adult and would know what was best for himself, then decided that maybe that wasn't the best way to put it. Sirius _was_ more responsible than he'd been before, certainly, but it was a bit hard to tell from the outside and it would take too long to explain.

"If it isn't, I don't think he minds," he said instead.

* * *

A few days later, Harry lay on his back not far from the fire.

Ron and Neville were doing Muggle Studies together, and Harry was half-listening (and providing a helpful ear along with Dean in case one of them said something that sounded obviously troublesome), but most of his attention was on the book in his paws.

He'd been following Sparhawk and his friends for several books now, and the intrigue was just getting really ramped up in this one. It did give him a few questions that apparently all twenty-five thousand Pandion knights really had been trained in magic by the same person, but maybe it was just easier to teach the _magic_ kind of things in this world. Or maybe Aphrael had something to do with it, since magic was mostly asking a god nicely to do something in this world.

His tail flicked lazily, and he turned over a page – the contents of which made him do a double-take.

"Oh, so _that's_ who it was," he said.

"Who what was?" Ron asked, looking up from his work. "Blimey, Harry, you like that Hobbit book with how many times you've read it."

"Huh?" Harry asked, then flipped the book over. "Oh, no, this is because of a present Sirius and Remus got me. It's actually a new book I disguised as a smaller one so it'd be easier to read."

"Neat," Ron pronounced. "Hey, what's the difference between a tram and a train?"

"Well, you know what trains are, you've been on one," Harry said. "Most Muggle trains are quite a lot like that, really. Trams are… more like buses."

"What's a bus?" Ron asked. "I know the Knight Bus exists, but we've never had to use it."

"A bus is sort of… okay, look, do you know what a car is?" Dean tried.

"Yeah, Dad's got one," Ron nodded. "It flies."

At Dean's look, he held up his hand. "Don't worry, I know that's not a normal thing cars do. It's strictly for emergencies, Dad says… that reminds me, Muggle cars need petroil, right?"

"Most people say petrol, but yeah," Dean agreed. "Anyway, a bus is like a car in how it goes on the road, but it's taller so people can stand up in it, and it's a lot longer. People pay to travel in it, and there's lots of seats – like, twenty or thirty at least – and sometimes it's got two floors."

Ron nodded along. "Okay… and a tram?"

"A tram is like a bus that only goes along certain routes," Dean said, and Harry wasn't sure if there was a better way to put it – even as confusing as it was. "It's kind of halfway between a bus and a train, because it has tracks to follow like a train but it goes on roads where cars and stuff go."

Ron blinked, a little bewildered.

"Muggles are weird," he said. "That just sounds like all the bad sides of trains and buses."

"I think the idea is that it's easier to run?" Dean offered. "Cheaper and stuff. Muggles can't do things by magic."

"Oh, yeah, that's kind of what Muggle means, isn't it," Ron nodded.

"I'm going to put down that trams look more interesting," Neville said.

"...have you ever _seen_ a tram?" Dean asked. "I don't think there's been any in London for forty years."

"I've seen trains several times," Neville pointed out. "Trams would be new and interesting."

Harry smiled, and went back to his book – keeping an ear perked in case someone had another question.

* * *

Harry tilted his wings, trimming through the air a little, then pulled up slightly and let the air fall off them.

The eddies that resulted let him shed height without gaining speed, and he flapped hard twice to help the process along before flaring and touching down at walking pace.

"Harry, good to see yeh," Hagrid nodded to him. "All going well?"

"Yeah, sorry I haven't visited in a few days," Harry replied. "I meant to yesterday, but Runes was being tricky."

"You don't need to apologize to me about doing your homework," Hagrid told him firmly. "You're at Hogwarts to learn, not to visit silly old buggers like me."

He paused. "Forget I said that, that's not a nice word."

Harry chuckled, looking around at the area around Hagrid's hut, then picked one of the taller rocks to jump up onto. It was just about the equinox, and at twenty minutes to six the sun was sinking steadily towards the distant western horizon and the Cuilins on Skye, but it still felt pleasant.

"What kind of thing are you doing in Runes?" Hagrid asked, after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

"It's mostly the bit which is about learning Runes as a language," Harry replied. "So we've got the letters – mostly – and we're learning about the words. It's still at the stage of learning vocabulary, though."

"Ah, words for sun and water and summat like that," Hagrid said. "I can see how that might be a mite tricky. Well, keep up the good work, Harry."

Harry nodded.

"Arithmancy is being interesting too," he reported. "We're talking about this thing called Pascal's Triangle, which you can use to do calculations about coin flips and stuff. So the more coins you have, the more the likely result kind of… spreads out?"

He spread his paws, trying to explain it. "With two coins, you can only have both heads, or both tails, or one heads and one tails."

"What about one tails and one heads?" Hagrid asked.

"Oh, they treat that the same," Harry answered. "Or, they do if the coins are the same kind of coin, but you treat it differently if you can tell the difference between the coins… but a lot of it's the same. That's why there's only a one in four chance of getting two heads on two coins, even if the coins are the same."

He shook his head. "I'm not really explaining it well."

"It's okay, Harry, you're the one doing Arithmancy," Hagrid chuckled. "I couldn't do that. Did Divination and Creatures, back when I was at Hogwarts."

"I bet you were really good at Care of Magical Creatures," Harry said.

Hagrid nodded, but he seemed a bit downcast all of a sudden. Harry wondered how he could cheer his big friend up, but it was only a few seconds later that Hagrid cheered up all on his own.

"There she is!" he announced, putting his knitting to the side and waving. Harry rolled over onto his front and stood up on all four legs on his rock, watching as Nora came swooping low over the lake, then landed much like Harry had in the clear space by Hagrid's hut.

If with a bit more of a thump.

"I'm back!" Nora announced. "My wings feel tired now."

"Tired, eh?" Hagrid asked. "Let's get you heading off to bed, then. Sorry, Harry, got to take care of this."

"I don't mind," Harry assured him.

"Mind?" Nora repeated, looking back at Harry and tilting her head. "Mind what?"

"Oh, sorry, I was talking to Hagrid," Harry apologized, then repeated what he'd wanted to say to Hagrid in the first place without looking at Nora.

"Okay," Nora said, accepting that.

* * *

The journey up towards the castle was a bit long and slow, but Harry didn't mind that either.

"You're getting big," Hagrid said, looking Nora over. "Isn't that right? Nora big dragon!"

"I'm a big dragon," Nora agreed. "Harry is a _small_ dragon!"

Harry chuckled, and there was a clatter as the Ravenclaw Quidditch team went past on their way back up to the castle now the sun was setting.

That did make him wonder, though, because he couldn't remember _every_ detail of his Dragonish lessons with Hagrid but he was sure Nora was using a lot of grammar and stuff that he hadn't ever taught her.

Maybe that was just magic? But if she'd magically learned Dragonish, then surely at least some other dragons must have learned it the same way…

"Summat on your mind, Harry?" Hagrid asked, as they got close to the postern gate that led to Nora's inside accommodations. That might need rethinking some time in the next year or so, but for now she could still fit through the corridor behind it.

"Oh, just wondering how Nora learned to speak Dragonish," Harry explained, glancing at her as he spoke.

Then he realized he'd forgotten again, and so he'd said it in Dragonish instead of human.

"I learned at night!" Nora said. "When I sleep, there's a voice!"

Harry blinked.

"...what?"

"I said!" Nora reiterated. "When I sleep, at night, I hear a voice! It says words and I learn them!"

"Something wrong, Harry?" Hagrid asked. "I didn't get all that."

"Nora says she learned to speak Dragonish because a voice she hears at night told her how to," Harry repeated, slightly baffled.

Hagrid considered that, then nodded. "Well, that sounds odd, right enough. Think it's one of the ghosts? Don't _think_ there's a portrait in that room."

"I suppose it _could_ be Lord Ridley," Harry frowned. "But usually when I run into him he tries to stab me."

"Is it food time soon?" Nora asked.

"Oh, sorry," Hagrid said, giving her a scratch, and she leaned happily into it – making a rawr noise and twitching slightly – before following Hagrid into the corridor for her supper and to get settled down for bed.

Harry watched her go, wondering what on earth could be going on.

Maybe the Marauder's Map would help.

* * *

When Harry passed what Nora had said onto his friends, none of them had any idea what it could mean.

Neville suggested that maybe there _was_ a dragon ghost somewhere in the castle and that the spirit in question was hiding from Lord Ridley, and only coming out at night, which seemed like it _could_ be possible but not very likely.

As Ron pointed out, it just raised the question of how _that_ dragon had learned to speak Dragonish.

Neville agreed, shrugging. "I don't claim to have all the answers. I'm the thick one."

"You're the thick one?" Ron asked. "I thought I was the thick one."

"I'm pretty sure I've got the thickest skin," Harry volunteered, inspecting his arm. "If that means anything."

"Mate, you've got the _darkest_ skin, too," Dean shrugged. "I think everyone's just labelling you as an exception to everything."

"Except ability to catch the Snitch," Ron pointed out. "Anyway, we're missing the point. Which of us is the thick one?"

"I don't think there has to be a thick one," Hermione said, looking up from her Transfiguration work. "And if it's a ghost, it will show up on that map that the Marauders made, right?"

"Yeah, ghosts do show up," Harry confirmed. "I'll have to look one of these nights."

"It's kind of a pity there isn't a way to rewind on that map," Dean said, then frowned. "There isn't a way to rewind, right?"

Harry shook his head. "No, Sirius showed me everything it could do over the summer. Except for all the secret messages, apparently there's reactions to a few names but he didn't demonstrate the lot. I said I was Harry Potter and it filled up with messages about how Prongs totally wasn't related to me, but that's just one that's for any Potter name."

"I wonder who else it reacts to," Ron mused. "Maybe it reacts to He Who Must Not Be Named?"

"But he mustn't be named," Neville pointed out reasonably. "Why would you use his name in the first place?"

"I don't really want to test it either way, in case the Map self destructs," Harry said, shaking his head. "Anyway, we do have Transfiguration homework to do… I'll have a look at the Map tonight and see if I spot anything."

The homework was still sitting on the table, so Harry got to work on it.

* * *

Harry didn't exactly spend all night looking at the Marauders' Map – or the Marauder's Map, depending on whether it was a map for a Marauder to use or the map all the Marauders had made – but none of his looks showed anything besides Nora herself in her sleeping chamber inside the castle.

He did notice that she spent a bit of time moving around, but maybe that wasn't surprising. It was interesting that she showed up at all, because not everything did – pets did, sure enough, and Harry could see Crookshanks prowling around Gryffindor Tower at night, but Ron's magically animated griffin statue didn't. Ghosts showed up, but portraits didn't either, and some portraits like the Fat Lady did seem every bit as much living, thinking personalities as some ghosts.

It was another odd question to add to the hoard, and Harry sometimes wondered if he should be keeping notes.

* * *

A few days later, with the topic of Boggarts finally exhausted, Remus started their Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson by chalking the words RED CAPS on the board.

"Do any of you know what a Red Cap is?" he asked, and several hands went up. "Not you, Miss Granger, eager as you are..."

"Why not, Sir?" Hermione asked, sounding quite offended.

"I'm afraid that answering questions makes people feel more confident in their knowledge," Remus told her. "I'm quite sure you know anyway, but I'd rather approach someone else… Mr. Finnegan."

"They're one of that grab-bag of magical beings, beasts and spirits called the shee or the fey," Seamus said. "You tend to find them on old battlefields."

"Correct," Remus agreed. "Though strictly it's places where blood has been violently spilled, and where not much has happened since. A little blood won't do, which is why they're found on battlefields that haven't been built on or in the dungeons of old castles, or other places with dark histories… Miss Perks?"

"They try to kill Muggles who they find in what they think is their territory," Sally-Anne volunteered. "With clubs."

Harry winced, remembering what he'd read in the textbook about them. They did sound like thoroughly unpleasant creatures, and not the sort who were just misunderstood animals either.

"Also correct," Remus said, chalking that on the board as well. "Red Caps can be distinguished in several ways, and one of them is their red caps. They try to kill unwary travellers, Muggle or Wizard, and soak their caps in the blood."

That brought a round of 'eww, gross' from most of the class, Harry among them.

"Fortunately, they have a number of weaknesses," Remus went on. "Mr. Longbottom?"

"Hitting them with a big metal club," Neville suggested.

Remus blinked. "That's not… _quite_ what I was going for..."

"I would have thought it would work the same way it works on most things," Neville said. "The textbook doesn't say hitting a Boggart with a club will stop it, and that worked."

"That _is_ true," Remus allowed. "But, despite Muggle folklore about the magical creatures and spirits known as the fae, cold iron does not harm Red Caps."

"I wasn't suggesting using cold iron, Professor," Neville tried to explain. "Just hitting them with something, because I'm not very good at magic."

Remus chuckled. "I think you're better than you may realize, Neville. But in fact with a Red Cap your instinct would betray you. They are hard indeed to harm with mundane physical force, and are best driven off with hexes and jinxes."

Neville nodded, absorbing that.

"Is that why they're so dangerous to Muggles?" Fay Dunbar asked.

"Correct," Remus agreed. "They are cowardly enough to not wish to fight a group of humans, whether Wizards or Muggles, but they are brave enough to go after someone who has become lost and bludgeon them over the head from behind."

He turned to the board. "One of the ways to tell if you might be in a place inhabited by Red Caps is to listen out for an apparently sourceless grinding noise..."

* * *

A few days later, Professor Dumbledore asked to see Harry in his office.

Wondering if that meant there was more news about Tom Riddle, Harry gave the password (Black Magic, which was a bit ominous) and climbed the stairs which were gradually becoming more familiar.

"Ah, Harry, I was just thinking about you," Dumbledore said pleasantly, waving him to a seat. "Do you know of a reason why that might be?"

"I… think you asked to see me, Sir," Harry said.

"I suppose that could be it," Dumbledore agreed, nodding to himself. "It's rather a boring explanation, but it's as good as any."

He pushed a bowl across the table for Harry. "Would you like a sour sweet?"

"I wouldn't mind, sir," Harry replied, looking at the bowl. It looked a lot more like it was full of Rolos.

"What a pity," Dumbledore sighed. "I only really have chocolates at the moment. Will those do?"

On Harry's nod, Dumbledore indicated the bowl with his hand, and Harry picked one out between the tips of two talons. It turned out to be surprisingly cool, and tasted really quite nice.

"Is there any news about Tom Riddle, Professor?" Harry asked, once he'd finished the chocolate-and-caramel piece.

"Oh, well, there is good news," Dumbledore replied. "But only in the sense that no news is good news. Sorry to say, I have no further information, though I do have an idea where I might _find_ further information; I will let you know when more progress is made."

He smiled. "But I did call you here, unless my memory is worse than I remember, and I am sure you would like to hear why."

Harry nodded, sort of glad it _wasn't_ about Tom Riddle – if all his conversations with Dumbledore were about him then it would get quite sad, because Dumbledore was nice to talk to. "What is it, Professor?"

In reply, Dumbledore waved his wand. Something on a shelf over to the side moved, floating calmly over to land on the desk, and Harry inspected it.

"Do you like it?" Dumbledore asked, smiling. "I've heard that Muggles use them these days."

Harry looked at it again.

It was still a typewriter.

"I don't think most Muggles use them any more, Sir," he said, thinking about the one Archimedes computer that had been at Little Whinging JMI and how he'd learned that typing on the keyboard would make things happen – he was a little vague on the details because there'd only been one computer and a lot of students to use it. "I know that Uncle Vernon was quite proud of having something called a Next Station, which he said meant that nobody would need typewriters any more, but I never saw it."

"Ah, well, it appears I have been mistaken," Dumbledore said, still pleasant as usual. "However, I would ask that you indulge an old man and see if your friends such as young Miss Sanura can use it. If it allows them to write faster, then perhaps we could see about Silencing the clacky bits of it and allowing them to use them in exams."

Harry brightened, thinking that sounded like an excellent idea. "I never thought of that, Professor, that's really clever!"

"Alas, the idea was not mine," Dumbledore told him. "I asked Professor Burbage what she could do to help, and this was her second idea – I will not share her first, though, for I always think it better to judge someone based on their best ideas rather than their worse ones."

Harry did wonder what the first idea was, but if Dumbledore didn't want to share it he supposed that was Dumbledore's choice. He tested the weight of the typewriter, carefully avoiding using his talons in case they punctured anything, and found that it was heavy enough to be awkward because he had to use both paws to lift it.

After a bit of thought, he took out his wand and cast a feather-light charm on it. They'd learned the Charm last year, and it didn't last for more than a day or so, but it made the machine much lighter and easy to lift in one paw.

"Well done, Harry," Dumbledore complimented him. "If this works then of course we shall have to get hold of a number of other typewriters, and perhaps in addition to the silencing charm I might add handles. But do let me know how it goes – perhaps you might type me a letter?"

* * *

Harry left Dumbledore's office much happier than he'd been expecting, and later that same day he was showing the typewriter to the rest of the club – especially June, Tanisis, and Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.

"I'm not really sure I understand this," June admitted, poking at the letters. One of them went click, and she inspected her paw in case that had something to do with it.

"I haven't used one myself," Harry replied, but then Luna pulled it over to the side.

She hit one of the keys, and the parchment in it slid up a little. Then she began hammering on them in earnest, tapping away, until after a minute or so she pulled the parchment roll out of the top and showed them.

**F**

**You press the keys to make it write a letter. The shift one makes it do capital**

**letters. You press the Return key to make it go up so you can write on the**

**new line.**

"I didn't know you could type, Luna," Tanisis said. "I've always seen you using a quill in class."

"Daddy said it was a useful skill," Luna answered pleasantly. "You do have to practice, though. Who wants to give it a go?"

"I will," Flopsy suggested. "Or, we will, I suppose."

"We only have to hand in one set of essays between us," Mopsy agreed. "Okay, um… the keys are a bit small, we'll have to use claws?"

"Sounds good," Flopsy agreed. "Better than sticking wands in our mouths, anyway."

"Don't forget to put some new parchment in to practice on," Luna pointed out.

As they did, Harry noticed Tiobald wave Tyler and Anne over. He passed them a small book of basic British Sign Language that he'd taken to carrying around, then slowly spelled something out.

Harry couldn't read BSL yet, not reliably, but he thought he recognized a bit of it. Something about handwriting, from when they'd been discussing how fast each of them could write.

The fact the two Slytherin kitsune started giggling at one another was probably a bad sign. Mostly for Fred and George though.

* * *

The morning of the full moon, none of Harry's best friends (or inner circle, or friend hoard, or whatever term was appropriate to collectively refer to Ron, Hermione, Dean and Neville) seemed to be very focused.

Harry was fairly sure he knew why, and did his best to watch out that nothing went wrong in any of the lessons they had that day – or, at least, the lessons he was actually in. Hermione had all her electives (which meant all the electives the school offered) and Harry was only in three of them, and of course he couldn't help whoever else was in Muggle Studies or Divination either.

At least the lessons were fun. In Arithmancy Professor Vector told them about a Muggle concept called Monte-Carlo simulations, which turned out to be sort of like reverse Arithmancy. Instead of doing a lot of maths to work out what the probability of something happening was, you did the thing a lot of times and counted it up to work out what the probability was.

Then in Transfiguration they talked about transfiguring _taste_ and how it was much easier to make, say, cheese taste sweet or bitter than it was to make cheese not taste fundamentally _cheesy_, and Runes had them trying word games like wordsearches where all the words they had to find were in futhark.

It was surprisingly tricky, but it did help them get into the habit of seeing the runes as letters.

After lunch it was Care of Magical Creatures out in blustery showers, where Professor Kettleburn introduced them to the Augurey – a peculiar and mournful bird, which had originally been thought to foretell death but instead merely foretold rain.

It seemed like an animal where the decision to hide it from Muggles had been made based on what it had been _thought_ to do, though Professor Kettleburn helpfully told them that it also had taxonomic problems and so it was a jolly good piece of luck that they'd decided to hide it.

Harry did find it a bit hard to hear the lesson with how often the Augurey wailed about the drizzle, though.

* * *

Some hours later, as the clock passed six – about sunset, and also about full-moon-rise because that was how astronomy worked – Hermione checked that they had everything.

"Okay, that's six mandrake leaves, in case any of us have a problem," she said. "I'm going to use a sticking charm to make things easier."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Ron asked.

"Sirius said it was the only way an unnamed Marauder could do it," Harry supplied, remembering the conversation. "He said that he and my dad didn't have any trouble, but the unnamed Marauder needed magical help because he was a pillock."

Neville tried not to giggle. "Sirius isn't exactly subtle, is he?"

"No, I don't think so," Harry agreed.

"Are you coming, Harry?" Dean added. "For moral support or something?"

"I can't, really," Harry apologized. "I've got to check on Remus, and that won't give me much time left to get back to the room before Curfew."

"Oh, that's a good point," Dean admitted. "Forgot about that."

He glanced out at the window. "Pity it wasn't like this earlier, you'd think it hadn't rained a bit."

The moon was just starting to peek over the eastern horizon, and Harry wished them all good luck before setting off for Remus's office.

* * *

When he got there, the door was shut and locked.

It made sense, Harry supposed, and he carefully knocked.

He could hear Remus moving around inside, and several seconds of scrabbling at the door, until finally it unlocked with a _click_ and Harry pushed the door open.

Remus had already transformed, obviously, and he gave Harry a lupine smile before leading him into the office. Harry shut the door behind him, looking around at the dog-eared reference books and fishtank full of what he thought were Grindylows, and held up his wand in a question.

In reply, Moony held out his paw flat and wiggled it a bit; maybe, but not just yet.

The werewolf picked up his own wand in a paw, fitting it between two toes, and pointed it at a huge sheet of blank parchment pinned up on the wall.

Clearing his throat, Moony made a little yip noise, and lines appeared on the parchment. They drew themselves in very much the same way as the Marauder's Map did, and within seconds there was a drawing of a very large cat in the middle of the parchment.

Another yip, and the word Nundu appeared. Then a third, and the instruction to run away if you saw one appeared.

"That's very impressive," Harry said, and Moony looked quite pleased with himself. Then he agreed to let Harry turn him back, burrowing under a sheet as he began to revert, and a few minutes later Remus emerged – fully clothed.

"Thank you, Harry," he smiled. "I came up with it last week, and I thought I'd test it. It might let me handle a lesson while I'm Moony, if I need to."

He checked the clock. "Have your friends decided if tonight is the night?"

"Yes, they were about to set off when I left the tower," Harry confirmed.

"Well, good luck to them from me," Remus decided. "I'll make sure to include the bit about how Animagi get on well with werewolves when I get around to doing a lesson _on_ werewolves."

He winked. "I think I'm a bit of an expert."

That reminded Harry of something. "Is… is the fact you're a werewolf going to cause problems if you're found out?"

"It's not a secret any more, as it happens," Remus told him. "I'm just not making a fuss about it either. That's what my appearance at the Sorting Feast was about. There aren't any laws against it, and you've seen yourself how good Dumbledore is with loopholes."

Harry had to agree.

"Now, I think we've got about half an hour before curfew," Remus went on. "How are my lessons going so far?"

"A lot better than Professor Quirrell or Lockhart," Harry replied. "But that's not really hard, so..."

* * *

AN:

Dean hasn't seen any trams either, except possibly once in a transport museum years ago.


	40. Harry Does More Of The Talking

Hermione and the others didn't want to talk about what had happened up on the Astronomy tower.

They didn't mind _Harry_ talking about it, even guessing what might have happened, but they didn't want to talk about it, and it took him a moment to realize that that was because of the whole "leaf under the tongue" thing.

The best thing to do at that point was really just to wish them good luck.

* * *

"It's much more relaxing being around so many Gryffindors like this," Blaise said, that Saturday, as he, Tracy and Daphne worked on History homework with Harry and his friends.

"You mean when most of them aren't saying a word?" Daphne replied, considering. "Hmm. I can see where you're coming from."

"I know where I'm coming from is England," Harry said.

Then frowned. "Or… actually, I'm fairly sure I was born in Godric's Hollow. Any idea where that is?"

"Still England," Daphne supplied. "Somewhere in the West Country, not sure of the exact details."

She examined her notes, then the book they were working from. "That can't be right. According to this the burning of Fimbert the Forgetful was in England, but this book says that the town where it happened is Scottish."

"Berwick upon Tweed?" Hermione asked, her words slightly mumbled.

"Yes, exactly," Daphne confirmed.

Hermione wrote something on a scrap of parchment and shoved it at Harry, who picked it up and read it.

"Oh, I see," he realized. "It's somewhere that kept changing between England and Scotland. So it's both depending on when you count."

"Doesn't that technically mean you could say it's either, and you can't be marked down for either of them?" Tracy asked.

Dean looked impressed, and nodded.

"See what I mean?" Blaise asked. "The only time most of them say anything is when they're correcting something. I could get used to this."

He made a note. "Fimbert the Forgetful… that's the one who knew he was going to be burned and forgot his wand?"

Harry nodded.

"I wonder what we'd call him if he wasn't named something like Fimbert?" Blaise mused. "It would be terribly unfashionable to call someone Gareth the Forgetful."

"If I did it I'd be Harry the Hapless?" Harry suggested.

"You'd be Harry the Hardly Harmed," Ron said, though it was a little hard to understand _all_ the words.

Harry chuckled.

* * *

Some minutes later, as they were all reaching the point they had about the right amount of essay, Blaise put down his quill and tapped his fist on the table.

"I'm a bit worried about my mother," he began. "And I thought it would be a terrible idea to confess weakness to Slytherins, so I decided it would be better to ask Gryffindors about it."

"Why's that?" Tracey asked. "And we're Slytherins."

"Yes, but you're friends," Blaise waved off. "If I was someone else you'd feel you _had_ to take advantage of it… but if a Lion knows about a weakness they're practically required to not exploit it. If You Know Who had convinced everyone he was terribly weak to having spells cast on him then Dumbledore wouldn't have been able to do a thing to him."

"I'm not sure it works that way," Harry said, frowning.

"Really?" Blaise asked. "Well, I assume it does, and everyone knows Slytherins are better at this sort of thing than Gryffindors."

"Why _are_ you worried about your mother?" Daphne said. "She seemed perfectly fine last time we met, over the summer. Is there something in her letters?"

"Or has she stopped sending letters?" Harry asked, thinking about it. "That might be a reason why."

"Oh, no, none of that," Blaise said. "It's just – It's been a whole month since I left the house, and she hasn't married anyone yet. I'm wondering if she's ill."

Ron made a kind of gagging noise.

"Is he all right?" Blaise asked Harry, indicating Ron with a jerk of his head as the Weasley slowly slid off the chair. "He doesn't sound very well either."

Harry didn't know the answer to that at first, and he gave Ron a careful look.

"I _think_," Neville began, speaking slowly and carefully, "that Ron is trying not to laugh. I hope he doesn't burst something."

"Is there something funny about my mother being ill?" Blaise asked, turning to Daphne.

Daphne shook her head. "No, which would mean that the Weasley there would be being very ill-mannered if your mother was actually ill. Instead, she's taking a break from trying to gather up the wealth of every rich bachelor in the country."

"None of that's been proven," Blaise pointed out.

Harry mused that, because wizards were basically just people with magic, there must be people as odd as his friends in most Muggle schools as well.

That meant there were probably some odd students at Dudley's school as well, though that was a bit of an odd concept in and of itself.

* * *

Surprisingly – or at least surprisingly to Harry – in their next Care of Magical Creatures lesson, Professor Kettleburn told them to get out their wands.

"Professor?" Dean asked, putting his hand up. "Wands?"

"Correct, Mr. Thomas," Kettleburn agreed. "Wands it is! I know that Care of Magical Creatures is popularly considered to not be one of the wanded classes, but since you are all wizard and witches it seems only appropriate to use magic when it is by _far_ the best option. Now, I assume you all know the Scouring Charm already?"

Hermione nodded, but she was the only one who did. For everyone else, heads shook, and Professor Kettleburn put his remaining natural hand to his chin.

"Well, that might make this a little more awkward," he said, considering. "Still, you'll have to learn sooner or later, this is _care_ of magical creatures after all..."

Someone asked what Professor Kettleburn was getting at, and he merrily told them that one of the things you had to do to care for a creature was to sort out cleaning their cages or otherwise dealing with the dung. Since none of them except for Hermione could cast the scouring charm, they'd have to do it with shovels and scrapers and other such tools.

Really, it wasn't _that_ different from Herbology, if you thought about it.

* * *

As October slowly continued and the nights drew in, as the air got slowly cooler and sunny days less likely, Harry did his best to make sure he wasn't getting overworked.

The idea he had was that there were two kinds of overwork, where one of them was just that you had too much work to get finished – which was the obvious kind – and the other was that you had enough time to do the work but not much extra time left over. That second kind was a lot like what he'd had with Quidditch in second-year, especially during the period leading up to the exams, and now he knew what it was like he tried to notice.

It helped that even both his new clubs together involved much less time than Quidditch, and the meeting with the other non-human students sometimes ended in half an hour because nobody could think of anything more to say.

The dungeons and dragons club, on the other paw, did take up at least one evening. Usually Harry had to spend a bit of extra time with working out what they were going to do next, but Harry had sort-of-cheated by deciding that some of the things the group would run into would be the same no matter which way they went or what they did.

More importantly, everyone was enjoying it a lot. Whether they were running into Rebel Numenorans, Orcs, Dwarf bandits or just some monster spiders, everyone enjoyed the challenge of working out how to defeat what the latest enemies were – like sending Su's Rohan warrior off to deal with enemy archers on a nearby hill, or having Tanisis' elf lead them all around the side of a roadblock so they could attack the enemy from behind.

It had taken Harry a bit of time to work out what to have them actually trying to _do_, at least in the long term, but after some thought he'd decided that it would be good if there was an evil plan by Sauron to start a war.

He wasn't really sure on all the details, but he knew where he was going and that was probably good enough for now. It was no invasion from another universe like in the books about Pug, but it felt more Lord-of-the-Rings-y.

* * *

On the tenth of October, Harry and his friends went down to visit Hogsmeade for the first time.

Though, as they walked down, Harry wondered about how that wasn't actually very accurate. It was their first proper Hogsmeade visit, sure, but he'd been to Hogsmeade before because Sirius had a house here. And they'd all visited during the Easter holidays in Second Year, even Dean, though that had been only the once because he'd spent most of the rest of the holiday back home with his family.

There _was_ something different about Hogsmeade when it was full to bursting of Hogwarts students, though. Laughter filled the streets, young wizards and witches running back and forth, and there was a huge crowd outside the sweetshop in particular.

"What first?" Ron asked, enunciating his words a bit better than before but still having trouble with the leaf under his mouth. "Sweets? Jokes?"

"We could look at the book shop," Harry said. "Or is that a bit stereotypical of me?"

"Stereotypical would be gold," Hermione pointed out.

Harry had to admit that was true – though he also had to admit he liked gold.

"Let's just look around," Dean said. "I didn't see much before."

"What about if I point everything out?" Harry suggested. "So… that's the post office, though it's mostly just an owl hire station. I think they have a thing they can do with big parcels, apart from just attaching lots of owls to it."

"House Elf, probably," Neville said.

* * *

The strangest thing about going around Hogsmeade, ironically, wasn't anything to do with Hogsmeade. It was the general strangeness of having a conversation where four of the people involved were doing their best to say as little as possible.

Being close to his friends as they tried to avoid the disadvantages of the Animagus ritual was really making it clear to Harry why more people weren't Animagi. Even if you knew every detail of the process, and even if you could manage all the bits, it was still really inconvenient for at least one month and usually several.

Sirius met them around lunch, which he treated them to, and they ate at a table outside the Three Broomsticks.

"After trying food in Muggle pubs, it's actually kind of interesting to look back at what this place does," Sirius mused. "It's mostly the same, fish and chips and stuff, but then you get to the pumpkin hotpot. I don't think they'd do that at the Crown Prince."

"You've been to a pub?" Dean asked, blinking. "Huh."

"Ted Tonks took me the first couple of times I went," Sirius explained. "It's kind of halfway between fast food stuff and asking Kreacher to make me something."

"He does do good food," Harry said, using one of his chips to scoop up some mushy peas. "Remember that quiche?"

"Do you mean the quiche where he came to us apologizing about dumping half a bag of baking soda into it by accident?" Sirius asked. "He's still apologizing to me about that. You're the only one who had any."

"It was nice, though," Harry defended himself.

A flash of movement caught his attention, and he looked over to see Issola flying down from one of the rooftops. He swooped down in front of Fred and George Weasley and flared his wings, shifting into Percy in an instant, and tapped his foot.

"And where do you think you two are going with all those fireworks?" he asked.

"Perce!" Fred announced.

"Lovely to see you," George agreed.

"It's not against school rules to buy fireworks in Hogsmeade," Fred went on. "On account of how Hogsmeade isn't in Hogwarts."

"So we're not sure what you're swooping down on us like this for," George concluded.

"Well, if you're not planning on taking them into Hogwarts, that's all right then," Percy said, with a smile. "Let's go and set them all off on one of the nearby hills together. It'll be a family thing."

"Now, steady on," Fred said. "That's not on."

"Fireworks are a private thing," George declared.

"You what?" Fred asked. "You're seriously using that argument?"

"Not one of my strongest," George admitted.

"All right, come on," Percy instructed, twirling his wand and making the firework packages rise into the air. "We'll do it on Meade Hill."

It was hard for Harry not to be impressed.

* * *

"We had a bit of trouble with someone in Hufflepuff," Flopsy reported, a bit shyly. "And I think we didn't handle it well."

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"Well, we were typing our notes," Flopsy explained, as her sisters nodded along. "In Charms. And this boy next to us, um, Peter Trimble, he complained about how much noise we were making."

"I said we couldn't help it, it was the only way to take notes fast enough," Mopsy contributed. "It's mostly silenced anyway, it's just the sound of our claws and the parchment and stuff… and he didn't say anything to that, but he kept grumbling about how much noise it was making. It got on my nerves."

"Mine too, eventually I said that he should sit somewhere else," Flopsy took it up again. "Cottontail told me I was too loud, but I didn't really listen to her..."

"I kind of felt like he deserved it," Cottontail muttered. "Even though I said."

"It does sound like he was rude," Harry said, thinking out loud. "But… I suppose the difficult thing about something like that is that it _is_ really annoying, but getting a teacher involved sounds just stupid."

"Exactly!" Mopsy agreed. "If any of us had told Professor Flitwick that he was complaining about the noise, we'd have sounded like we were the petty ones."

Tiobald made a few sign gestures, and Luna translated them. "Could you have moved?"

"Flopsy said afterwards we should have done that," Mopsy reported. "But… it felt like that would mean he was winning."

"And Gryffindors are supposed to be brave," Cottontail added.

"Maybe it would mean he was winning," Harry agreed. "I want to say that you shouldn't care if he thinks he's won, but… it's a lot easier for me to give that kind of advice when I'm not in the situation."

His tail lashed as he tried to think of something else.

June tilted her head, stretching slightly. "Maybe if I have a word with him about how that's not really a Hufflepuff thing to do?"

"Nah, I'll do it," Anna volunteered. "I'll sit down in the library with him, stroking Tyler, and say that what he did was really _Slytherin."_

"Isn't that praising him, though?"June asked, blinked, then snickered. "Okay, I actually like that."

"Why do I have to be the one who's being stroked?" Tyler asked. "Why not you?"

"Because it'd look weird for a fox to be stroking a human, keep up," Anna said.

Tyler stuck his tongue out. "Nyeh."

"That would be really helpful," Flopsy said. "I'm still going to feel like I didn't handle it right, but maybe it'll mean it won't happen again… but what if it _does_ happen again?"

Tanisis had been lying with her head on her paws for a while, and now she spoke up. "I think I know. If it happens again, put your paw up and ask the teacher if you can move so that you can concentrate – if the other person's complaining to you, say it's so you can both concentrate. Then you're on the other side of the room… and if they follow you, _then_ take it to the teacher because that's something that's much more clearly bullying."

"That sounds like something we can do," Mopsy agreed, as her sisters let out not-quite-twin sighs of relief.

"How's the typewriter getting on, by the way?" Tyler asked.

After a moment's confusion about which one of the three would answer, Flopsy took the lead. "It's a bit tricky to use claws, but we're getting used to it."

"Maybe making it bigger would work," Harry said, thinking. "I know you can have magic tents and bags that are bigger on the inside, so you could carry it from class to class in a bag..."

* * *

There hadn't been a new Discworld book in quite a long time – the last one was Lords and Ladies, which had been fun but had been more than a year ago – and Harry felt faintly worried about it all.

It wasn't quite like with other books – if there wasn't any other book after _The Shining Ones_ then the whole story would feel incomplete, whereas the Discworld books sort of started and then finished their own stories – but it was just one example of how it could be quite awful waiting for the next book in a series that you really liked. Or even just that was quite good.

Another of that sort of book series was the books about a space captain called Honor. There had been two books so far, and it sort of felt like everything was building up to a war but the war hadn't actually started yet, and in a way Harry would have been quite happy if the war never really happened (because that way there would be more fun to read about with the captain and her treecat).

Lying on his pile of duplicate books, Harry sighed a little.

Sometimes it felt like what he wanted was for a book series to be already finished – not because that way he could read everything, but because that way whatever awful things happened to the characters had _already_ happened. Getting a new book and finding that a character you already liked got hurt, or that their friends found something out about them and stopped liking them, was just… it didn't spoil the book, but it felt much worse than running into it in book four of a five book series when book five was sitting on the pile just waiting to be read.

Maybe it was something to do with feeling that it would all be all right in the end. Thinking about reading the last of the Tamuli books didn't feel quite so upsetting, perhaps because it _was_ going to be the last book?

Shaking his head, Harry rolled over onto his side. Then, deciding to check on the spur of the moment, he got the Marauders' Map out from his collection of things.

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good," he whispered, then pulled his wand back from the parchment. "Lumos."

By the wandlight, Harry watched as the map drew itself. It took a while to do so, which was a bit of a pain, and then he focused in on the area where Nora was sleeping.

No sign of anyone else in the room. Just her.

It had been worth a try, and Harry wiped the map clean before folding it up and tucking his head under his wing.

There was Herbology tomorrow morning, and some of the plants didn't like it if you yawned.

* * *

It was early the next week – and not long before Halloween – when Harry approached Remus at the end of a Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson.

"Everything going all right, Harry?" the lupine professor asked. "You didn't have any problems with that hex we were doing to fend off Kappas, did you?"

"No, Professor," Harry replied. "Or – I don't think so, but just offering them a cucumber seems much nicer to me."

"It is, certainly," Remus agreed. "But sometimes, regrettably, you get caught without a cucumber."

He took a seat. "Now, if it wasn't about the lesson, what was it you wanted to talk about? I'm afraid we won't have _too_ long, I have a Seventh-year class in half an hour, but we can talk for a little of that time – unless you have a lesson first?"

"No, this was the last one today," Harry replied. "I was wondering about what Dumbledore said, about that powerful fire spell I should be learning – and if you think I'm ready to learn it yet."

Remus paused, then gave a solemn nod.

"A difficult topic indeed, Harry," he said. "You have a good deal of talent, and you are a hard working dragon indeed, but the problem with practising the Fiendfyre spell is that it's both very hard to control and very destructive if mis-cast."

Harry nodded, thinking about that.

"What would be a good way to get better, then?" he asked.

"Well… you've mentioned the Patronus Charm as a spell you're interested in," Remus replied. "That might be a good step. It's definitely not an OWL level spell, so it's the same rough difficulty as Fiendfyre, but it's much less likely to burn the castle down."

"Hogwarts is made of stone, isn't it?" Harry asked.

"Fiendfyre is extremely hot," Remus informed him.

"No, I understand that," Harry defended himself. "But what I mean is… wouldn't it _melt_ instead?"

"That's a good point, but… that's Fiendfyre for you," Remus said. "It's kind of like that. Which is why I want to be as sure as possible before I teach it to you."

"Right," Harry agreed.

Hogwarts was a nice place, and he didn't want to burn it down. Or melt it, come to that.

Most of his friends were here.

"Hmm…" Remus mused, using his wand to silently summon a schedule. "Is there any day in particular you were thinking of? I'm afraid I'm busy most weekday evenings."

"Friday evening?" Harry suggested. "It depends if it's okay to be out after curfew."

"Hmm, it might be," Remus said, thinking. "I'd probably have to walk you back to the common room in that case, but I'm sure Dumbledore wouldn't mind."

"Then Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening after curfew would all be good," Harry answered.

* * *

Remus' directions led him to one of the old classrooms on the third floor, and when Harry arrived ten minutes before curfew he found his lycanthruncle clearing away space in the middle of the room.

"Do we need the space?" he asked.

"Well, I don't know," Remus admitted, as Harry joined him in pushing away benches and long-unused cauldron burners. "But it's always better to have space to move around when you're learning a new spell – and, to be honest, I don't trust those cauldrons."

Once the last of the benches was pushed aside, Remus went to get a book out of his bag. As he did, Harry sniffed the nearest cauldron.

It didn't seem to have any spell residue in it, and a quick light spell on his wand revealed nothing visible in it either. Harry decided to scrape the inside to see if there was any residue left, and while that didn't result in him finding any dried up potion bits he _did_ dig a hole clean through the bottom of the cauldron.

"What's that, Harry?" Remus asked, and Harry looked up a bit guiltily.

"I think I broke the cauldron," he admitted. "Sorry."

Remus used a levitation spell to lift the cauldron, and inspected the hole in it.

"Well, I can see why they didn't bother retrieving them," he said, after a moment. "That's really very thin indeed. I wouldn't be surprised if that cauldron split if it got kicked at the wrong time."

Harry winced, imagining that, then took a bite out of the cauldron as a snack.

"It does taste like good quality pewter, though," he said, swallowing.

Remus gave him a strange look, then shook his head.

"Now, there are two main types of magical creature that the Patronus is usually used against," he began. "Those are the Dementor and the Lethifold. I don't happen to have either of them, or a way to get hold of them, but we'll see how we do without them. Ready?"

Harry adjusted his weight, holding himself up with one paw on the corner of a table, and readied the wand in his free right paw. "I'm ready."

"All right, the wand movement is like this," Remus demonstrated. "And the incantation is _Expecto Patronum_. If you could repeat that?"

"_Expecto Patronum,"_ Harry duly repeated. "Which means, um… expect someone to help? I think?"

"I'm not certain all spells have quite _correct_ Latin grammar," Remus told him. "And there are spells in other languages anyway. But roughly speaking, you're correct… let's see that again?"

Harry demonstrated a second time, and then a third, and each time Remus corrected him slightly.

"There are several reasons this is a difficult spell to cast," he explained. "It's complicated, and so you have to be precise, but it's also a spell which is particularly hard to tie off – I think Professor Flitwick will have covered that with you?"

"Something about how a charm that's been partly cast but not fully cast leaks magic, I think," Harry checked.

"Good, that's right," Remus agreed. "Which means it's a spell that can tire you out quite quickly, unless you've nearly perfected it – so watch out."

Harry nodded, understanding that.

"The most important thing about the spell, though, is that it relies more than perhaps any other spell on how you _feel_ and your own _willpower."_ Remus tapped his fingers on the nearby desk. "It's a spell which is fuelled by happiness – normally this means you think of a happy memory, the happiest you can find, and pour all of that into the spell as you cast it."

"I can see how that's hard to do," Harry agreed, taking in a deep breath before blowing it out in a slightly smoke-filled sigh. "It's hard to concentrate on one thing, and it's hard to pick which memory is the happiest. I've got a lot."

Remus swallowed, taking Harry's wing-shoulder and squeezing it for a moment, then stepped back.

"Shall we give it a go?" he invited.

* * *

After two hours of practice, Harry knew just what Remus meant about how it would be draining. Every time he managed to sustain the white mist of the incomplete spell it just hovered there, not seeming to do anything but clearly using fantastic amounts of energy because it brought him sinking down to all fours inside a minute.

Remus assured him that it was fine, and that the Patronus was meant to be a _difficult_ spell – getting it right in two hours would have been amazing. That did make Harry feel quite a lot better, and after Remus took him back to Gryffindor Tower he went up to the dorms for ten minutes with _Wings_ before bed.

The bit about never having seen an exploded working diagram of a goose always made him giggle.

* * *

"Phew, that was a trial!" Ron announced, on Sunday morning. "I don't know how Hermione finds the time to do all that stuff. Just not being able to speak was enough of a pain."

"I do know what you mean," Neville agreed. "I kept having to stop and think about what I was going to say. And mealtimes were..."

He shook his head, taking a pasty.

Harry inspected his own pasty, then took a bite – enjoying the combination of textures – and blinked as the whole thing started to fall apart.

"You hold it like this," Ron told him, demonstrating, and Harry adjusted his grip before beef and potatoes avalanched out onto his plate.

"Okay, so we're heading out this afternoon, right?" Dean asked. "I think the time in Africa is about the same."

"Lake Victoria is a bit further east than we are, but the thunderstorm there usually starts in the evening," Hermione reported. "I did some reading about it over the summer."

"I hope you enjoy it," Harry said, thinking. "I'll probably come with you to Sirius' house, but then I'll just read or practice a spell until you get back."

He took another bite of his pasty.

"You sure you're okay with that, mate?" Ron checked.

"Well, yeah," Harry replied. "I'd _rather_ watch, but it's not like you're going to be away for long. That's kind of the point."

"So here's something I was wondering," Dean said, frowning. "That moth chrysalis thing you had to put in each of the potions, Hermione, are they found all around the world?"

"I… think I need to look that up," Hermione admitted. "I wonder if there's a version of the ritual used in places the moth doesn't live?"

"That's what I was thinking," Dean agreed.

"It'd be a laugh if in Brazil they just cast one spell and it's done," Ron sniggered.

* * *

The sky got steadily darker and more ominous towards lunchtime, and by two in the afternoon – as the friends left for the walk to Hogsmeade – the whole of the sky overhead was a deep, ominous black.

"Cripes, who knows a spell that protects you from weather?" Ron asked, looking up. "Any minute now it's going to bucket it down."

Harry took the book he'd been planning to read, a copy of _Born to Run, _and tapped it with his wand to cast an _Impervious_ spell.

"I don't think it would be a good idea to cast a spell like that on any of us," Hermione said, thinking. "We _are_ going to be doing something that involves the weather."

There was an ominous rumble from overhead.

"...or we could just hurry to Sirius' house now," Dean suggested. "That _was_ a thunderclap."

Everyone exchanged glances.

Then, by an invisible signal, they all broke into a run.

* * *

Harry kept his head tilted so he could keep an eye on the sky overhead as they hurried down to Hogsmeade, and the little flashes of sheet lightning up in the thunderhead overhead were dancing from place to place – sometimes directly overhead, then over the Forest or Hogwarts instead, but always nearby.

There was that rule about how you could count the seconds between the flash and the bang to tell how far away the storm was, and sometimes there was a very long wait of maybe ten seconds and a not-very-loud rumble. Then there would be a bright flash just overhead and a very loud BANG only about a second later, which Harry was pretty sure meant the storm wasn't even very high up.

The rain was just starting as they reached Sirius' house, big fat wet splats which soaked everyone to the skin (or hide) in an instant, and as Harry's friends panted in the hall they could hear the rain drumming on the roof.

"Well, this is convenient," Sirius announced. "You've got the potions?"

Hermione nodded, raising a hand for time, then reached into her satchel and took out four stoppered bottles with labels around the necks. All four of them were blood-red, just as they were supposed to be now that the lightning storm had started, but each one had a different texture – Ron's vial was clear, Hermione's bubbled and roiled constantly, Dean's was milky and cloudy, and Neville's one had a faint internal glow to it.

"Are they supposed to be different?" Dean asked, suddenly sounding worried.

"I sort of expected that," Sirius assured him. "Ours were, too, but buggered if I know what any of it meant."

A crack-BOOM shook the house, and everyone with a potion bottle held onto theirs tightly.

"Let's get you all started," he added. "The basement's cleared out, and we should hurry while the storm's still going."

Down the stairs they went, Harry following behind everyone else, and his friends all spread out a bit under Sirius' direction.

"Remember, you won't know how big you'll end up being," he reminded them all, as Harry took up a position lying against one wall. The basement expanded slowly in size as Sirius made sure they had as much room as possible, growing to the point you could probably fit an elephant in without any trouble, and then a bit more for luck. "Do you remember what the final steps are?"

"We cast the sensitization spell again," Ron said. "Amato Animo Animato Animagus, I think?"

"That's it exactly," Sirius agreed. "You cast that with your wand pointed at your heart. Then you drink the potion."

"Well… here goes," Neville gulped. _"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."_

* * *

AN:

Yep, I'm going there.


	41. Third Form Wizards With Second Forms

When Neville drank his potion, his other hand clenched suddenly, then went to his chest.

Harry remembered what Sirius had said about the moment of first transformation – there was a flash of fiery pain, then a kind of strong, intense double heartbeat. It sounded like it was something to do with your other-body-shape being made, though Harry wasn't sure about that.

Neville slipped forwards, supporting himself with one arm as the potion bottle rolled away. Then, all at once, he transformed.

Even though Harry was becoming used to it, with Fred and George and Percy and Sirius all in his life to varying degrees, it was still startling just how _sudden_ it was. A blink would have missed the whole thing, and then all of a sudden instead of a thirteen year old boy there was a big night-black panther stood on three paws.

"Blimey," Ron said. "Nice one, Nev."

Neville looked down at himself, head twisting as he tried to see what he looked like, then he and everyone else reacted as Sirius cleared his throat.

"_Speculo,"_ he said, and a six-foot mirror appeared next to him.

A little unsteady on his paws, Neville padded over to the mirror to have a look at himself. That meant he was closer to Harry, as well, and Harry could give him a good look over at things like his paws – claws safely retracted away – or his coat, which had little leopard-style spots almost hidden in the general blackness of the fur.

"I thought you could only turn into animals from the place you lived?" Dean asked. "Or did I make that up?"

"If you've ever seen a five foot wild dog in Britain, let me know," Sirius shrugged. "Maybe it's supposed to be like that, but after zoos got invented it was all mixed up."

After the initial shock of what Neville had changed into, Harry sort of understood where the Animagus transformation was coming from. He'd read the Jungle Book, anyway, and Bagheera was a loyal friend and strong guardian.

"Don't try and force it," Sirius added, looking down at Neville. "Your new form has instincts. Don't let them rule you, but don't ignore them either – it'll be much easier to get used to moving about if you let them nudge you along."

Neville nodded, a little uncertainly, then opened his mouth to look at his teeth.

The noise he made was quite startling.

"Is something wrong?" Dean asked.

Neville repeated the noise, and waved at his teeth.

"...oh," Ron said, and tried not to snigger. "Yeah, they do look a bit buck toothed. Sorry, mate."

Panther-Neville made a rumbling noise deep in his chest.

Another thundercrack reminded them that the storm was still going on, and Ron held up his potion. "Should, um, should I go next?"

"Probably," Sirius agreed. "Remember what I said about instincts."

Ron shuffled over to the middle of the floor, and as he did Neville tried to lie down.

"Not going to change back yet?" Harry asked.

"There's a bit of a knack to changing back the first time," Sirius said, for all of them. "I can walk you through it all at once, probably better to do it that way so we can get you all done while the thunderstorm's still going."

"Right," Ron agreed, flipping his wand around to point at his heart. _"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."_

* * *

The very first part, just after Ron took his Animagus potion, was more-or-less the same as what had happened to Neville – though for his part Ron stayed upright, wobbling a little but not falling forward like Neville had.

Then Ron yelped. "Uh, wait-"

A moment later, there was nothing but a reddish-grey squirrel.

Harry vaguely remembered how there were red squirrels and grey squirrels in Britain, and Ron looked like he was halfway between red and grey. It was hard to tell without a book to compare him to both possibilities, though.

"...somehow these always manage to be surprising," Sirius murmured, as Ron's new tufted ears twitched around.

Ron looked around, saw Neville, and gave a big whole-body flinch. It was quite eye-catching, especially his tail – which sort of rippled like a wave, and which had a bright orange down the back – and when he landed from it Ron was about to dart away from the big cat. But he stopped, clearly controlling his reaction, and sighed a squirrelly sigh.

"I suppose that must be the instincts!" Hermione said brightly, scribbling down some notes. "You see two big predators, and you want to run away?"

Ron nodded.

Harry wondered for a moment who the second predator was, then thought about how _he_ would look to a squirrel-ified Ron and realized that… oh, yeah, that would do it.

"I wonder why Ron ended up as a squirrel," Dean said, thinking out loud. "Maybe it's because they climb things?"

He snapped his fingers. "Hey, that's right! Now you need a much less powerful rocket to get you into space! You can just make most of your weight _go away_, and if you don't mind being a squirrel for the whole journey you can make the capsule really small too."

"Maybe it would help your balance?" Harry suggested. "Percy got a lot more comfortable with flying after he became Issola, and squirrels _are_ good at balancing."

That prospect seemed to make Ron feel a lot better about all this. It was still hard to tell, because Harry wasn't very good at reading squirrel expressions, but he came bounding over to join Harry and clambered up his clothes to rest just on top of Harry's head.

Harry had the feeling that that sort of thing was going to happen more often. Sure, Ron was pretty tall – only Dean was taller in their year, at least so far – but maybe it felt different if someone else was being tall for you.

"Hightail, perhaps?" Sirius wondered.

Harry couldn't see what Ron was doing, but he felt Ron's weight shifting a bit.

"You don't get to pick your own Marauder name," Sirius added. "You can suggest, but you can't veto unless there's a very good reason."

"Should I go next?" Dean asked. "Or you, Hermione?"

"I'm taking notes," Hermione explained. "I've never seen an Animagus ritual before and there's enough of them happening now that I can get some useful information. I'll go last."

"All right, if you say so," Dean agreed. "Here goes."

* * *

Dean shrank down much as Ron had, rather than growing as Neville had, but didn't go down quite so far – and didn't end up as a mammal, unlike both of the other boys. His legs grew scales, his arms became wings, and when the blurring, eyeblink-fast change had finished it was some kind of big black bird that was stood there.

"Hmm," Sirius said, considering. "Is that a raven, a rook or a crow?"

"Can't be a raven," Harry replied. "He's not a Ravenclaw."

Neville coughed a few times, which Harry thought was probably laughter.

"I think we might need a book on that one," Sirius decided. "Unless you know, Dean?"

Dean shrugged expansively, and took off.

Based on his extensive experience with flying with wings, not all of it having gone entirely _properly_, Harry was fairly sure that Dean hadn't intended to take off. He cawed in surprise, flapping instinctively to try and make things better, and made things worse quickly enough that Harry had to catch Dean out of the air before he hit the wall.

"Yeah, wings can be hard," he said, setting Dean down again. "I wouldn't mind teaching you, though. Until then, um… maybe try kind of walking around, then jumping a bit?"

The corvid-Dean bobbed his head in a quick little nod.

"I think I've seen what his tell is," Sirius volunteered. "I'm pretty sure most black birds like that don't have pale undersides to their wings."

"I don't think most birds _can_ do that, not with their flight feathers," Hermione volunteered. "Can you raise a wing again, Dean?"

Dean duly did, and Hermione pointed. "Yes, that looks like the underside of the primary feathers are paler as well. That's a really interesting one."

"What was Prongs' tell?" Harry asked, suddenly realizing that he didn't even know. "And can they change?"

"They might be able to change," Sirius replied. "Or… yeah, a certain rat who will go unnamed had a missing toe as well as the rest of how he looked. So the animal form isn't locked in… and it was markings around his eyes, like his glasses."

Harry nodded, swallowing slightly.

"I think that's just Hermione to go," Sirius added, changing the subject slightly. "Are you done with your notes?"

"For now," Hermione replied. "I wonder if Dean _is _a crow, those are supposed to be good at art. I think I read something about that… that's crows from New Caledonia, though, which is a long way off-"

Hermione visibly stopped herself, and carefully blew on her parchment to help the ink dry. She put it to the side, on the nearest shelf, then put her quill in the same place and got out her wand.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and she pointed her wand at her heart. _"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."_

* * *

As she drank the potion, Hermione seemed torn between nerves and excitement and curiosity. Her hand was already on her chest, ready to feel her double-heartbeat, and though it was obvious when the painful part of the ritual began she just took a sudden sharp breath and stayed upright.

Then she blinked. "What-"

A moment later, the transformation was over, and everyone stared.

Everyone else had been something easily recognizable, at least in the basic details. Neville was a big black cat, Ron was a greyish-red squirrel, Dean was a black bird. But what Hermione had become was so unusual that Harry wasn't quite sure he had any idea at all.

She was about three feet tall, maybe a bit taller, with two scaled and taloned feet that led up into legs coated with a fuzz of small brown feathers. Her similarly-feathered body was sort of horizontal, like a bird, and she had an enormously long tail with a strake of longer flight feathers hanging off it in colours shading from dark brown to glossy black.

That might have made her a bird, if a really big one, but her arms made it even more confusing. They had black flight feathers as well, but there were also three separate claws, and her feather-fuzz-topped head had a mouth with some impressive teeth instead of a toothless beak.

"...that's a new one on me," Sirius admitted, as Hermione tilted her head to look back at herself.

Harry wasn't an expert on the body language of whatever it was Hermione had turned out to be, but he was fairly sure that Hermione herself was baffled about the whole situation. She held up one of her forearms – were they wings or not? - and examined it carefully, before shaking her head.

Neville moved aside so Hermione could look in the mirror, and that just seemed to make her more annoyed about something. It was when she was actually lifting one of her feet – holding it up to look at more closely and testing the sickle claw – that Harry realized something.

"Wait, is that what _velociraptors_ were like?" he asked. "You remember that film we went to see, Sirius?"

"I remember the film," Sirius agreed. "And I remember that the velociraptors weren't fluffy."

"Maybe they got it wrong?" Harry suggested.

Ron squeaked.

Sirius frowned. "What? Sorry, I don't speak squirrel."

Another squeak, and Harry felt Ron moving around and trying to act something out.

"Oh, yeah, right, teaching you how to change back," Sirius realized. "Nice charades by the way."

* * *

"Okay, here we go," Sirius said, once everyone was properly arranged so that – just for example – Harry wouldn't suddenly find a Weasley on his head. "This took us something like three hours the first time, because the instructions say it'll be easy to change back but they don't really go into detail _how_. Fortunately for you, though, I know the trick."

He shifted to Padfoot, then right back to Sirius again as a demonstration. "The trick is to remember that your human form is _you_, just the same as your animal form is _you_. It's a kind of magic that doesn't need a wand, and that means the way to access it is all about emotions at first. So… remember that."

The four newly-minted Animagi visibly thought about that for a few seconds, then Dean turned back into a human.

"That was weird," he said, looking at his hands. "Now these feel small."

"Yeah, you get over it," Sirius assured him. "A few changes back and forth and they both feel natural."

Neville blurred back into human form perhaps half a minute later, and Ron and Hermione followed him almost at the same time.

"This is _so_ annoying!" Hermione announced, picking up her notes again and starting to write. "I'm sure I _must_ be some kind of raptor, but… but..."

"I'm more concerned with _why_ you're a dinosaur," Ron volunteered. "They went extinct sixty five million years ago."

"That's probably because I was using a time turner during the whole sensitization period," Hermione fretted. "But there's no way to test that – Percy must have stopped using his one because he could make it to all his lessons, that's why he's not ended up as a dinosaur as well. But it's that I had _feathers!_"

Putting the quill down, Hermione shifted into her Animagus form for a moment, then straight back to human. "This is proof that dinosaurs had feathers, and I can't _show it to anyone!_ Or anyone Muggle, at least – do you have any idea how annoying that is?"

"...well," Neville said, after several seconds of silence. "You're still Hermione, at least."

* * *

It was still only the middle of the afternoon, about half past three, and nobody particularly wanted to get wet going out into the still-raging storm.

Sirius supplied all four of Harry's friends with what tips he had about getting used to an Animagus form – shifting back and forth as much as possible so that both sets of rules for how to move your body got properly set in place, for example – and Harry helped out Dean specifically by walking him through the basics of flight. It was a bit different to dragonflight because feathers could shift around, so Harry wasn't entirely able to explain everything, but just being able to give Dean the basics of how air moved over wings was quite helpful enough.

Or at least that was how Harry interpreted it, after Dean reached the point he could fly up in the air and land on Harry's tail as a perch.

"It's really convenient how changing into our Animagus forms takes all our clothes and stuff with us," Ron said, after what might have been his tenth change. "Is that different from normal Transfiguration?"

"I know a werewolf transformation doesn't take any possessions with it," Harry told him. "I don't know what happens if an Animagus is wearing clothes in animal form, though."

"I don't think we ever tried it," Sirius reported. "If you want to do experiments that's up to you, though."

"To be honest, that would be pretty cool," Ron volunteered. "Maybe Neville could have, I don't know, a glove or something?"

He paused. "No, that's a stupid idea. Never mind."

Dean jumped down from Harry's tail and shifted back into human-form. "I kind of want to see what it's like carrying things as a crow," he said, frowning. "Some birds can sing, right? Could I cast spells if I had my wand as a crow?"

"Now _that_ would be cool!" Ron enthused. "Or if we learned silent casting, or whatever – imagine Hermione running through with both of us standing on her back throwing spells everywhere!"

Hermione sniffed, and shifted into her dinosaur-form before pacing over to one end of the room.

She made a little gesture with her arm, and everyone in front of her got out of her way. Then she tried running across the room, and got up to what looked like a fairly respectable speed – before slowing down again to avoid hitting the wall on the other side.

Changing back to human, she made another note. "Not as fast as I expected, really. That's surprising because raptors are always shown as being very fast."

"It looked kind of fast to me," Ron volunteered.

"Well, we can try and measure it some time," Hermione suggested. "I'm sure there's somewhere around here where we can try it – oh, but that means we have to register first. How does that work?"

"Registering?" Sirius repeated. "That's pretty easy, actually. You send in an application which lists your name, age, wand, alternate form and distinguishing marks, then the registry commission makes an appointment to verify that you can actually do the transformation."

He shrugged. "Honestly, I'd probably have actually registered after leaving school if I knew how easy it was."

"What about your Animagus name?" Neville asked. "Do you need to include that?"

"No, Animagus names aren't an official thing," Harry pointed out. "They're just something that the Marauders did, and we sort of kept it up. Moony isn't an Animagus, and nor am I."

"But you never use your Marauder name, Puff," Sirius said.

"That's because I'm never not in my normal form," Harry replied. "And those names are for when you're not in your normal form, right?"

"Unless it would be funny," Sirius corrected him. "We didn't make the Map as a dog, a stag and a wolf. Stags have famously terrible handwriting."

He clapped his hands. "Anyway! Speaking of Marauder names, I think I've got one for Hermione already – Clever Girl."

"That sounds like I'm boasting," Hermione said, frowning. "But it _does_ sound like it fits, as well…"

"Well, Gryffindor isn't the humble house," Dean pointed out. "Actually, which house is the humble house?"

"Hufflepuff," Ron answered. "You don't hear about it much, because they don't like to make a fuss."

Harry sniggered.

"Not sure about you, Ron," Sirius added. "Apart from Hightail. Any other ideas?"

"What about something from Redwall?" Harry suggested. "Or Nutty, like Moony."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of being called Nutty," Ron countered. "What about Space Squirrel?"

"Brushtail?" Harry said. "It might be a bit similar to another one, though."

"I'll think about it," Sirius judged.

"Hey, don't _I_ get to think about it?" Ron asked plaintively.

"I think I got one for Neville, actually," Dean said. "Can you change back, Nev?"

Neville duly did so, stretching a little, and Dean pointed.

"Don't you think he looks like a Lapcat?" he asked.

The panther-Neville's head tilted on one side, and he blinked a few times.

Then he changed back to human. "What."

"It's not much sillier than Prongs," Dean shrugged. "Or Puff the magic dragon."

Harry waved.

"I like it," Sirius declared. "Hmm… well, we don't need to decide right now for anyone, it took months to decide on Puff…"

"If Dean's a raven, I've got an idea," Hermione said. "What about Inky?"

"You what?" Neville asked. "How do you get from a raven to that?"

"It's in Alice in Wonderland," she explained. "Someone asks a riddle – why is a raven like a writing desk?"

Harry completely lost track of the discussion at that point, and nobody else seemed to have much idea where it was going either. Apparently it was something to do with how the riddle was about being never put with the wrong end in front, or possibly nevar put with the wrong end in front, but a much better answer was about inky quills?

Ron just asked why Hermione thought _Dean_ was like a writing desk, because Dean did do drawings but that wasn't writing, and if anyone did more writing than anyone else in the room it was Hermione.

* * *

The storm petered out into rain, and then finally into spotty drizzle, about an hour or so before dinner. Nobody had eaten very much at lunch, partly because of nerves and partly because of the coming Halloween Feast, and the friends made their way back up to the castle through air chilled by the recent rain just as the sun was setting.

Harry lit his wand with a _Lumos_ spell and held it overhead in his tail, giving them all a little extra light.

"...so, what was that about a time turner?" Dean eventually asked, as they hiked up towards the castle.

"Oh… _bother_," Hermione groaned. "I just realized I mentioned it..."

"Afraid so," Harry agreed, then shrugged. "We'd already worked out something was going on, Hermione, and it was either that there was more than one of you or that the one of you there was was being in more than one place at once."

He stopped, repeating what he'd said to himself, then nodding. "Yeah, I think that makes sense."

"Took me a moment to get it, but I think it does," Ron agreed. "You're saying it was time travel or duplication."

"Exactly," Harry nodded.

Hermione shook her head, huffing out a sigh. "Well… Professor McGonagall told me not to tell anyone, so please don't pass it on any further?"

Harry was only too happy to agree, and everyone else did as well.

* * *

After an afternoon full of still-obscure personal revelation, the subsequent Halloween feast was a delight. The House Elves always put in even more effort for a named feast like Sorting or Christmas than with a normal day, and this was no exception – there were giant pumpkins with moving carvings, 'bandaged' sausages with croissant dough wrapped around them, spicy glow-in-the-dark dips in bread cauldrons and pasta with 'eyeballs' in it, just to name a few.

Harry particularly appreciated one dish that arrived in front of him, with the little dragon flag that indicated it was intended for him and him alone. It was a little strange at first, because it looked like nothing more nor less than a meat cleaver with red tomato purée splattered on it like blood, but when he sniffed it Harry could smell some different metals than the ones that were in normal cutlery.

Biting into the cleaver confirmed it – the metal inside was mixed together, layered, with at least a dozen different metals all swirled together into one of the most unusual dishes Harry had had in a while.

"What does that taste like?" Colin asked. "Is it like something normal humans eat?"

"Sort of," Harry replied. "It's… well, the difference between copper and iron is sort of like the difference between bread and rice, only not? But the iridium is more like a spice… it's kind of hard to tell which metal is what when they're all together like this, but it's nice."

"Be kind of funny if that was just a kitchen knife, and there's a pastry made with… dunno, a reflective car blanket or something down in the kitchen," Dean said.

"A what?" Ron asked. "Cars have blankets?"

"It's more of a summer thing," Dean tried to explain. "If a car is out in sunlight, it heats up a lot, but you can put a reflective blanket inside on the windscreen so it doesn't heat up as much. It sort of… reflects the heat out, I think."

"But heat's heat, isn't it?" Neville frowned. "Can you reflect heat?"

"Don't see why not," Ron said. "In winter it's annoying when Harry accidentally blocks the heat from the fire, and if you can block it why not reflect it?"

"I don't think we actually did _how_ it works in school," Dean admitted. "You'd have to ask Harry for a physics book. And Hermione to read it."

Harry snorted, then bit the tip off his cleaver.

* * *

After the main course, the desserts replaced them – which was fairly standard – but what was unexpected was when seventeen great big trees made out of sugar-icing appeared on all four House tables and up at the high table as well.

Fred was the first to reach up and pluck one of the fruits, sending a little cascade of dusted sugar down from the branch, and bit into it.

"Neat," he announced. "It's a toffee apple."

"It doesn't look like it," George said, then took a bite of his own. "Oh, so it is!"

"This one's a caramel orange," Cormac volunteered from a little way down the table.

Harry had heard of toffee apples, but a caramel orange was new to him. So was a chocolate pear, and when he pulled a fruit of his own down from the tree it turned out to be a banana made entirely out of white chocolate.

"I wonder if this is what happens when House Elves get bored?" Ginny asked, using her knife and fork to cut slices off a fudge fig. "Because I know it's a terrible thing to say, but if this is what happens then I think I want them to be bored more often."

"What's a good one without chocolate?" Mopsy asked.

"I was reading about that, actually," Hermione interjected. "Dogs can have a little bit of chocolate… but admittedly, something the size of an apple is probably too much."

"The apples are just made of toffee," Fred called. "So those should be fine."

"Great!" Flopsy said, nosing around in her robes for a moment. She came back up with a wand, and mumbled something.

"What?" Mopsy asked.

"I think she said about that spell we did in Charms this week," Cottontail guessed.

"Oh, right," Mopsy realized, and gave her sister a tiny little nudge with one ear. _"Wingardium Leviosa_."

Flopsy flicked her wand in time, and they levitated an apple slowly off the tree before putting it down on their plate.

Some of the Gryffindors applauded.

"That's really impressive to watch," Fred added. "It's _hard_ to time joint spellcasting like that."

"How exactly do you even _know_ that?" Seamus asked. "Do you two do joint spellcasting?"

"Well, not exactly," George answered. "You see, I'm Fred, and I hold the wand."

"And I'm Fred, and I say the words," Fred continued. "So there's just one of us."

Seamus rolled his eyes. "Should have known better than asking you two for a straight answer."

* * *

Fortunately, and despite what Harry sort of expected, no pets turned out to secretly be wanted and thought-dead traitors in hiding. The Smiths were even at the Halloween Feast, presumably because after last time everyone would be expecting it, and so apart from the really quite wonderful food and the fact that Harry's friends could now turn into animals there was nothing much unusual about the evening at all.

* * *

It was right back into classes after Halloween, because Hogwarts was apparently too old an educational establishment to have heard of the half-term. Not that Harry really minded, though, because he had the suspicion that the missing half terms just went into normal holidays instead, and it wouldn't be very fair on the people who lived somewhere like London to give them a holiday too short to get used to being back at home but long enough to make it feel like you had to go there.

Possibly Harry was overthinking it.

The upshot of that, though, was that after a few back-and-forth owls via Hedwig it was decided that the best time for the Animagus Registry Commission to come and visit was on the following Sunday, the seventh of November. They were advised that it was probably a good idea not to adopt their alternative forms too openly until they were registered, simply as a matter of courtesy, and Harry found that a bit disappointing but it wasn't really a long time to wait to do things like teach Dean to fly.

During the Quidditch practice on Tuesday, though, it was already obvious that something had changed. Before Ron had usually managed to save a bit more than half of the shots on goal by the Gryffindor Chasers, sometimes a bit less, depending on how confident he was feeling and how good the individual shots were… but now he was moving around more quickly, making more daring saves by dangling from his broom by one hand and one foot or even standing up mid-flight without any trouble.

"That's pretty impressive, actually," Neville said, looking up and then frowning down at the Arithmancy homework resting on his lap. "So… okay, how does this sampling thing work?"

"The sampling with replacement?" Hermione checked. "Okay, so that's-"

"Can I try?" Harry asked. "I think I understand it, but I want to be sure."

"Another shot on goal," Dean called, and they all looked up.

Alicia flew straight and level towards the top hoop, and Ron drifted up slightly to block it. Then she threw the Quaffle down to Katie, who was coming in faster and towards the middle hoop, and Katie took the shot only a moment later to try and give Ron too little time to react.

Ron rolled his broom around, grabbing onto the middle of the handle, and hung by one arm as he kicked the red ball out of the way before it could actually pass through the hoops.

"...cripes," Dean summarized. "That's not a normal move, right?"

"Don't think so," Neville replied.

Wood called out that it was time for Seeker practice for a bit, where this time it would be about trying to beat the other Seeker to something you'd both seen at the same time, and Harry began to explain. "Okay, so… imagine you've got a big pile of gold."

Dean sniggered. "Dragon."

"I know," Harry admitted. "Anyway. You don't know how much gold there is, and it's way too much of a pain to actually count it all, so what you do is you take… say, a hundred coins."

"A hundred, right," Neville nodded along.

"It doesn't matter what the number is, so long as it's fairly big and you make a note of it," Hermione clarified.

"Am I doing okay so far?" Harry checked, and got a nod. "Okay, so you have those hundred coins, and you mark them… say, you put paint on all of them, or you enchant them all so they've got a silly face on them, it doesn't matter as long as you recognize it. Then you put them back, and you mix everything up so it's nice and mixed around."

"Riiight..." Neville said, looking like he didn't understand and hoping that he just didn't understand _yet_.

"Then you get another lot of coins," Harry finished. "And if there's twenty of the coins you marked, then that means that you've probably got about a fifth of the total coins in the pile."

"So… if I got out eighty coins," Neville tried. "And there were ten of the coins I marked, that would mean I had about a tenth of the coins in the pile… so there would be eight hundred?"

"That's it exactly!" Hermione said. "Great work!"

"And well done to you, too, Harry," Dean chimed in. "I think _I_ understood that, and I'm not doing Arithmancy."

Harry ducked his head, embarrassed.

* * *

Classes meant that it simply wasn't feasible for Harry to go to visit Sirius on his birthday, and Remus couldn't go either because of his work – which was pretty sad, as far as Harry was concerned.

He was able to send Sirius a card, though, one which had a bad joke about how outside of a dog, a book was man's best friend. (Inside of a dog, it was too dark to read.) Accompanying it was a long letter Harry had written, in which he thanked Sirius for everything he'd done over the last year – for being some kind of combination of parent, guardian, supportive older sibling and whatever else he thought Harry needed at the time.

Accompanying _that_ was a wind up dog toy he'd found in Fort William a couple of weeks ago, for Padfoot, and a big joke book from the same place for Sirius.

Hopefully Sirius would have fun with both of them. Even if that meant reading some of them out to Kreacher.

* * *

That Thursday, at breakfast, Granny Longbottom's screech owl Darius came flying down to drop a letter on Neville's place.

Harry's friend opened it, smiling, then when he got a look inside his face fell.

"Is something wrong?" Ron asked. "I usually see the Twins look like that whenever Mum sends them a letter that just says 'I noticed'."

Neville smiled a little, but then looked back at the letter and sighed.

"It's from my Great-Uncle Algie," he explained. "I told Granny that I was an Animagus now, but Great Uncle Algie keeps going on about how surprising that is and how he never would have thought I'd be able to do it. I don't think he really thinks I can do it at all."

"Is that the same one you had an argument with over the summer?" Harry asked.

"Yeah," Neville agreed. "He's never really thought I was very good at magic. He even dangled me out a window once to try and make me do accidental magic, but my great aunt offered him some meringue and he accidentally let go… um, Harry, are you okay?"

Harry realized he was growling, and did his best to stop.

It was quite hard, and when he did he noticed that Hermione seemed to be bristling as well. Neither of the others looked happy either, come to that.

"I bounced, it's okay," Neville hastened to explain. "But I _haven't_ been very good with my magic, not since I came here. I'm surprised the Animagus transformation went so well..."

Ron frowned, then snapped his fingers.

"Nev," he said, reaching into his pocket. "Here. Do a bluebell flames spell."

Neville caught Ron's wand, startled, then tried the spell.

It came out about how Neville's bluebell flames normally did, a bit underpowered and slightly too hot to be comfortable.

"Okay, that settles it," Ron declared. "We need to get you a new wand. If _mine_ fits you as well as the one you're using does..."

* * *

Problem diagnosed or not, getting Neville a new wand had to wait at least a little longer simply because of the timings. There wasn't a Hogsmeade weekend for another few weeks, and besides that going during the holidays might work better.

Granny Longbottom did send Neville's _mother's_ wand, which worked noticeably better for him, and a few days later came the meeting with the Animagus Registration Committee.

That was one meeting that Harry wasn't involved with in the least, because he wasn't one of the Animaguses being registered, and he spent the time making a guess at the map of the town of Cair Andros in Gondor. That was going to be important in the next couple of sessions of the Dungeons and Dragons game, and it was important to be prepared.

(He'd certainly learned a lesson about that after last session, when the collection of puzzles he'd had in an old tomb had taken Tanisis only about half an hour to do from start to finish. She hadn't even needed any of the clues hidden in other bits of the tomb.)

Dean came out of the meeting and back up to Gryffindor tower first, sliding into one of the free seats, and Harry left off marking where the gates were. "How was it?"

"Kind of like cycling proficiency or flying lessons, in a way," Dean replied, frowning. "I had to change in both directions, and do it without my wand so I could prove I wasn't just doing human transfiguration."

Harry tilted his head. "Isn't human transfiguration much harder? And if they thought you were doing it anyway, couldn't you do _that_ without a wand?"

"Dunno." Dean shook his head. "Maybe it's because practically nobody can do wandless human transfiguration, but normally they're dealing with older people? I know she was surprised to hear I was thirteen."

He frowned. "But then why would anyone bother registering a _fake_ Animagus form in the first place?"

"To sound cool?" Harry suggested.

"Yeah, probably," Dean agreed. "That's usually why."

"Fred and George were fourth year, though..." Harry added, thinking. "But they do kind of break the rules."

He paused. "In more than one way."

* * *

Ron turned up about ten minutes after Dean had, and then Neville joined them ten minutes after that.

"I asked if she knew anything about what our Animagus forms say about ourself," he said, taking a seat. "No luck."

"I'm kind of wondering about Peter Pettigrew being a rat," Harry admitted. "Because it's kind of… something that reflects on him? But I don't see a way to know that."

He frowned, tapping a claw. "And I've heard that rats aren't actually all that bad, but does that matter? And does it matter what country you're from?"

"I wonder if maybe he'd have been nicer if he was a mouse," Ron admitted. "Or a bat? Bats are neat."

"If anyone in the school is a bat, it's Professor Snape," Dean suggested.

"Oh, what do you think Professor Vector is?" Neville asked.

Neither Dean nor Ron had actually had Professor Vector, but Harry had, and he frowned for a bit before making a guess. "What about… a kingfisher? I think light bends when it goes into water, so kingfishers have to work that kind of thing out with maths. Sort of."

"I kind of want to know what Professor Burbage would be," Ron admitted. "Or Charlie, actually..."

* * *

Fred and George came over to join in, bringing Ginny with them, and while nobody had any idea what Ginny might be there were several suggestions. With how there was a Quidditch game tomorrow – her first – Harry thought she might be some sort of bird, or something else agile like a cheetah, but it really was hard to tell without actually doing it.

Harry and everyone else lost track of time a bit, but he still noticed how long it had been when Hermione turned up – forty minutes after Neville had, and looking slightly flushed.

"Professor McGonagall said she'd never seen anything like my Animagus form!" she told them all. "And she went and got Professor Dumbledore, and he was impressed as well – I had to explain to him what we thought it was, because he'd heard of dinosaurs but he thought they were all slow and sluggish and lived in swamps. And then I had to tell all of them, even the lady from the registration commission, about how sure I was that feathers were something that dinosaurs originally had… and about how I think I got an extinct animal."

"Okay, we _need_ to see this," Fred said. "George, is it before curfew?"

"I think you'll find it bloody well is," said the other twin, who Harry had originally thought was George – though he was now reconsidering that, as you had to do with the Twins. "So, what do you say, Miss Granger?"

Hermione didn't mind, and they all headed to one of the disused classrooms for Hermione to show what she looked like. That turned into everyone demonstrating their Animagus forms, to Dean asking for more flying lessons, and to all three of Ron's siblings concurring that he should probably be called 'Nutkin'.

Ron wasn't happy about that, but Ginny informed him he was most likely outvoted.

* * *

November continued, getting colder and chillier as the nights rapidly drew in. The first Gryffindor Quidditch game of the year took place, and even though Ginny wasn't as good a Seeker as Harry had been everyone actually seemed to enjoy the game a lot more. Possibly that was just because it took more than about five to ten minutes, letting Oliver and the rest get some good playing-Quidditch in.

The Slytherin team wasn't exactly bad either, though it looked like they lost about as many points from penalties as they got from fouls, and after nearly an hour of play Malfoy beat Ginny to the Snitch by seconds – though that only meant Slytherin won by about thirty points, thanks to relentless Chaser play from the Gryffindor team.

Nobody seemed too upset about the result, at least, which was nice.

Harry had flying lessons to give to Dean, as well, and halfway through the first one they had an unexpected visitor.

"Hello!" Nora said, flying up through the crisp November air to hover in front of Harry.

She tilted her head as Harry flared his wings, switching into a hover, and her gaze went up to the crow-Dean sitting on Harry's forehead. "Bird on head."

"Yes," Harry agreed. "Do you remember how Percy turns into a bird?"

That question made Nora frown for a moment, flying around in a circle with her scarf streaming behind her, and then she nodded. "Yes! Boy turns into bird!"

She pointed her foreleg at Dean. "That one too?"

"That's right!" Harry agreed. "He's just learned how, so I'm teaching him how to fly."

"How to fly," Nora said, contemplatively. "How to glide? And how to flap?"

"Exactly," Harry told her.

Dean chirped something, and Harry looked away from Nora so he could speak English instead of Dragonish. "I'm explaining how I'm teaching you to fly."

"Can I help?" Nora asked.

"Actually, you probably could," Harry said. "Can you fly around in a circle for a bit?"

Nora's whole expression brightened when Harry told her she could help, and she nodded enthusiastically before flying a little way away and starting to fly in a circle.

"So you know about-" Harry began, then realized he was still speaking Dragonish and looked away from Nora. "So you know about banking around, sort of tilting so you turn a corner? It's a bit trickier with wings, because when you flap you do odd things to the air flow. Flapping means you overall turn harder, but if you're relying on turning smoothly it's better to not flap."

It was a bit hard to tell with Dean perched on his head, but Harry got the sense that his friend was nodding.

"Okay, let's have you try," Harry added. "Thanks, Nora!"

"I'm helping!" Nora announced proudly, and a moment later Dean hopped down off Harry's head and spread out his wings.

He wobbled a bit, not yet used to adjusting his flight slightly to even out any little irregularities, then tried banking around. It sort of went okay the first time, then he tried to flap while banking and overdid it.

The force of his wingbeat sent Dean into a tumble, flapping harder as he tried to figure out how to undo what had gone wrong, and Harry was about to head down and catch him when Nora did it first.

Dean bounced once off the membrane of her outstretched wing before coming to a skidding stop, looking distinctly dizzy but at least glad to not be tumbling any more, and Nora beamed up at Harry. "Catching!"

"Well done," Harry told her, impressed, then closed his eyes to switch to English. "Okay, Dean, ready to try again?"

When he looked again, crow-Dean was a little nervous, but he nodded and spread his wings again. As Nora was herself gliding along, that meant there was a wind, and Dean rose smoothly into the air away from the Ridgeback's wings.

"Right, now let's get used to banking without flapping first," Harry resumed. "Then we'll try gentle wingbeats..."

* * *

Dean still hadn't fully got flying down by the time of the first snow of the year, and as Harry had come to realize was normal for Hogwarts it was a big one. A foot of snow fell on the grounds all at once, and that afternoon – more-or-less by mutual agreement – everyone went out to play in the snow.

There was a recently-released Discworld book called _Men At Arms_ up in Gryffindor Tower with Harry's name on it (metaphorically, not literally, unless someone in it was called Harry) but he didn't mind skipping it for a day or so – not when there was snow-related fun to be had right now. There were snowballs to throw, thick snowdrifts to hide in, and most of all friends to enjoy it with.

Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail had never seen snow so thick, and while it wasn't thick enough to really hide them they definitely gave it a try. Half the Gryffindor first-years and a few of the second-years joined in in helping to make a big snow pile covering the girls, and when they broke out of it and shook themselves it pelted everyone within ten feet with thick chunks of fluffy snow. Then Dean tried using the snow as a soft landing to practice flying, which resulted in him rolling down a drift and fetching up against a small rise, and he changed straight back to human for just long enough to point something out.

"You guys realize that if you can turn smaller there's _more snow_, right?" he asked.

Moments later, Percy and Ginny were the only visible Weasleys.

"Aren't you worried by that?" Neville asked, glancing up at Percy.

"My brothers haven't yet realized that they can't throw snowballs of any reasonable size like that," Percy replied. "I, on the other hand, can fly if I want to… and cast certain spells silently. Like, for example, spells to lift large amounts of snow."

Neville nodded understanding, then shifted to Lapcat to hide under the snow himself.

"You need to hide your tail as well," Harry told him. "It's black, so it stands out."

* * *

A snowball sailed over one of the nearby drifts and hit Hermione, and was quickly followed by a second which Harry blocked with his wing.

"Who did that?" she asked, brushing the snow off the front of her robes.

"I think that was Tyler and Anna," Harry said, sniffing the air. "I can smell fox, anyway."

A muffled giggle all but confirmed it.

"All right," Hermione said, nodding to herself, and began packing snow together into a snowball. It started out normal-sized, but Hermione kept making it bigger and bigger until it was almost eight inches across.

Then, in a fluid motion, she shifted to Clever Girl and _jumped._ Her powerful legs launched her much higher off the ground than even Harry had expected, and even in dinosaur-form her wing claws let her hold onto her snowball until she was at the apex of her jump.

Snow avalanched down on top of what Harry judged was probably Tyler, based on the exact sound of the startled _yip, _and Hermione landed again before shifting back to human and dusting her hands off.

"That was satisfying," she said.

* * *

AN:

So that's what I decided on for their forms.

I've been waiting to do raptor-Hermione for... a while, though I only actually chose how _big_ she should be recently. (She's a Deinonychus, as they seem about the right size.)

The others were a bit harder to decide on. For reference, Ron is a red squirrel (not a grey one; grey ones don't get on with pine martens), Neville is a panther, and Dean is a crow.


	42. Winter's Wolf Moon

Transfiguration took on a slightly odd air for the rest of the term, because Professor McGonagall decided to keep up interest in their class by having Ron, Hermione, Neville and Dean each demonstrating their abilities.

It might have seemed like she was giving them special treatment, except that the Professor also made very sure to point out all the downsides of their Animagus forms. Hermione couldn't rotate her wrists much, for example, while as Ron was so small he simply couldn't carry or use things that a larger animal would be able to.

Somehow, Professor McGonagall always went from that to talking about different aspects of Transfiguration spells – such as how someone doing Transfiguration needed to keep in mind exactly what role they wanted from the result of their spell. It wasn't particularly hard to make something larger or smaller at the same time as transfiguring it using a specific spell, or at least that was what they were told – Professor McGonagall had them all try it out with a tortoise-to-teapot spell, aiming to either make a very large teapot or a very small one – but changing it in other ways was more difficult because that meant altering the shape.

On the plus side, Ron did get a rather nice tiny tea set out of the whole thing.

* * *

Hogwarts castle corridors were cold that November, the Scottish Winter definitely setting in as the Frosty Moon waxed overhead.

Or at least, that was what the astronomy book said a full moon in November was called.

Harry didn't really notice, his scaly hide keeping him from most of the negative effects of the cold, but everyone else was wearing their warm winter cloaks except in the warmest parts of the Common Rooms or whenever a helpful upperclassman or -woman had thrown a Warming Charm their way. Bluebell flames were also much in evidence, and Ron had Percy transfigure him a little jacket sized for his squirrel form before lining the inside with careful jets of bluebell flames.

Harry had thought the whole point of a squirrel having fur was to keep it warm, but he supposed that maybe you just couldn't feel warm _enough_ in weather like this.

When he asked in the Oddly Shaped Society whether anyone else was having trouble, he got a variety of answers. Tanisis had taken to wearing a modified horse blanket, saying that sphinxes were used to much warmer climates and even her shaggy cold-weather coat wasn't nearly enough, while Tiobald was just as inured to cold as Harry was.

Apparently the Black Lake remained pretty much the same temperature all year round, at least near the bottom where the Selkies actually lived. And water was much, much better at taking away heat than air was, so Tiobald just felt the same as he always did.

Luna just said that she had a pair of shoes with warming charms on them and a pair of shoes with cooling charms on them, since that way she'd be happy whatever the weather.

"But… what if it's just nice weather?" June asked. "Like in spring."

"One each," Luna told her. "It cancels out nicely. Otherwise I'd need a third pair of shoes for when it wasn't hot or cold."

Harry wasn't quite sure if that was a very smart way of looking at things, or just a very _Luna_ way of looking at things.

* * *

Harry was starting to feel a bit frustrated by his Patronus Charm lessons.

It wasn't just that it was a tricky spell. He knew he'd only been trying it for a couple of months. But it felt like he'd got a long way towards getting it right very quickly, and then made almost no further progress for weeks – as if there was just something he wasn't getting.

The spell practice _was_ helping, which helped a bit. He could cast the spell more quickly, and it didn't tire him out quite as fast – which might just have been that he was getting magic exercise or something – and it was still producing the silver mist that Remus said could keep him safe from a Lethifold or a Dementor for long enough to fly away.

Or see if they were flammable.

But that wasn't really why Harry wanted to learn the Patronus Charm, and after the silver mist from the latest attempt finally fizzled away he sighed.

"It'll come, Harry," Remus assured him. "This is a very difficult spell, and you're doing great at it. Even if you don't get it this year – which I think is entirely possible – you should get it done by the time of your OWLs, and that should serve you very well."

Harry nodded, and took a deep breath before doing his best to let all his frustration out again.

"Spells like the Patronus Charm depend so much on emotion that, oddly enough, many people who try to learn them cast them for the first time in situations of great danger or stress," Remus went on. "If we had access to a safe source of a Dementor or a Lethifold I might even recommend it as worth trying – but, of course, both are extremely dangerous and difficult to get hold of."

"I can understand that," Harry admitted. "And I'm not desperate, not really… I'll keep trying. Maybe next time, though."

He frowned. "It's the full moon next Monday, isn't it?"

"That's correct, Harry," Remus agreed. "I've already started my course of potions for the month."

"Do you have any idea if something's going to be different?" Harry asked. "Professor Sinistra says the next full moon is going to be a lunar eclipse, which doesn't happen very often."

"The last one was in June in 1992," Remus replied, thinking back. "That was before… well, before Sirius started kindly providing me with Wolfsbane potion, so I don't remember all the details of what happened. But I don't remember anything especially unusual happening, if that's what you're wondering."

He smiled. "I believe Professor Sinistra is going to be having as many students as wish to see it on top of the Astronomy Tower to watch? I might come up and join you – as Moony, of course."

Harry thought that sounded like a nice idea.

* * *

As it turned out, a lunar eclipse was somewhat less dramatic than a solar eclipse, and took several hours.

The whole process started about half past three in the morning, but nobody wanted to be up _that_ early on a Monday, and those students who were really interested in astronomy stated making their way up to the Astronomy tower not long before six AM.

There was a lot of yawning, even from Ron who was interested to see just how much difference there was.

Harry split off from the others to go down to the Defence Against the Dark Arts office, which Remus had told him had an apartment attached to it – apparently that was how things were handled with all the teachers at Hogwarts – and knocked on the door gently to see if Remus was up.

A slightly startled yelp answered him, and paws thumped on the floor before the door handle turned and Harry was able to push it open.

His wand was ready, just in case the eclipse had done something terrible to Moony that they hadn't expected, but… well, Harry wasn't an expert at wolf body language (he only really got practice with June, because three-headed dog body language was different on account of their being both dogs and three-headed) but Moony looked really very relieved to see him.

Shaking himself like he was trying to dry off, Moony sat and pointed to Harry's wand, then to his neck. Harry understood straight away, and flicked his wand as he cast the spell to revert Moony's werewolf transformation.

Moony pulled a sheet over himself as he reverted, and Harry stepped back to give his friend a little privacy.

"...phew," Remus said, eventually. "Thank you so much, Harry. I… well, I didn't expect _that_."

"What didn't you expect?" Harry asked. "Did something go wrong?"

"I found out why it is that werewolf attacks aren't nearly so bad on nights with lunar eclipses," Remus answered, as there was a rustling noise from the other side of the doorway. "And why any there _are_ seem a bit more vicious… as the moon got darker, I started to realize that I had _fur_."

"Pardon?" Harry asked, not at all sure what Remus could possibly mean. "Don't you normally have fur?"

"Yes, but I don't normally _notice_ it like that," Remus explained, stepping back into view again. He was dressed normally, now, though he kept scratching his head or the back of his neck every few seconds. "I was itching all over for what must have been hours..."

Harry thought about that, and winced. It sounded like the same sort of thing that had happened when he was about to moult, and he wouldn't have wished that on anyone.

"Does that mean werewolves are allergic to lunar eclipses?" he asked.

Remus gaped for a moment, then snorted.

"I like that," he decided. "Maybe I'll write an article about it, it certainly sounds less threatening when you put it that way."

* * *

After all of that, the actual lunar eclipse was interesting to see. It felt somehow _wrong_ to see the moon a deep red colour, with how used everyone was to it being white when it was visible at all.

Ron pointed out that, really, the more surprising thing was that it normally looked white. It was mostly basalt and other dark grey rocks, not white at all, and if it really _was_ white then it'd look much brighter.

Then someone asked what it would be like if a werewolf lived on the moon, and nobody had any idea. Even Professor Sinistra, when she heard, just said that that was one of those things where it wasn't very clear how the magic worked because nobody had actually been able to test it.

* * *

Strangely, it seemed as though books about moons and werewolves took up quite a lot of Harry's new reading around then. The new Discworld book had a werewolf in it, Angua, and it was interesting to go back and read the book a second time once you knew that everyone was nervous about her because she was a _werewolf_ instead of a _woman – _and that Carrot's nervousness around undead (which werewolves apparently were on the Discworld) was made worse by the fact he'd been talking to Angua about it.

Still, they seemed to be in love at the end of the book, and Angua did have some things she could do that real werewolves couldn't. Harry even pointed that out to Remus before lending him the book (along with the first of the books with Carrot in it), and Remus had to admit that he'd really like to be able to change any time even if he still had to change during the full moon.

Then the second book, one that Harry got early in December, was a continuation of a science fiction story where the moon was actually a giant spaceship. It was a completely different way to have the moon be important, having it fly off into space by itself, and Harry couldn't help but wonder what that would have done to werewolves in that book.

Come to think of it, they'd probably be surprised but very happy about the whole thing.

The book itself was another one of those books where it was hard to know what to feel about the fights going on. In the first book of the series the villains had been really villainous, horrible in all sorts of ways, but in this second book only a few of them were. The rest of them seemed to be people doing their jobs, doing what they honestly thought was the right thing to do, and once everyone knew what was actually going on there wasn't really a need to fight… but they couldn't skip past the fighting, because nobody was willing to listen.

Harry wondered if that was the sort of thinking that Professor Dumbledore had to do all the time, trying to find a way to get past the fighting to the bit afterwards where everyone didn't have to fight. It sounded like a very hard way to think, but also the kind of thing that was the right thing to do _and_ the kind of thing that a wise old dragon should know how to do.

While Harry was neither old nor particularly wise yet, he _was_ a dragon, and it seemed like this was the sort of thing he should practice. (He didn't need to practice getting old, though – that was the sort of thing that happened by itself, or at least that was how it seemed to be.)

* * *

At the end of the next society meeting, where Tiobald had been explaining how he'd been thinking of trying to demonstrate typewriters to his clan – the main problem being trying to make them work underwater, probably – Harry asked June to stay and talk for a bit.

"Of course," June agreed. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Well, this is going to sound a bit silly to say," Harry admitted. "I want to know some more of the details about what it's like being a warg, because I want to put werewolves in my Dungeons and Dragons game."

June's ears swivelled slightly, and her tongue lolled out. "You're right," she agreed. "That does sound a bit silly."

Harry chuckled.

"Why don't you ask Professor Lupin?" she added. "I think you know him, is that right?"

"I do, yeah, but… it's Middle-Earth werewolves I'm thinking of," Harry explained.

"That doesn't make me less confused," June said. "Wasn't it Middle-Earth where you got the idea for the name Warg?"

"Yeah, but you could have been either wargs or werewolves," Harry tried to explain. "They're both smart wolf things of different types in the Lord of the Rings books, it's just that we already use the word werewolves for a different thing in the real world."

June sat down on her haunches. "It makes as much sense as anything else you've said so far."

Harry assumed that was positive.

"Well..." June went on. "You've heard quite a bit of it already. We have to stay in the deeper parts of the Forbidden Forest most of the year, because we don't want to run into Muggles – not because we don't like Muggles, necessarily? I think it's just that it's kind of awkward."

"What about hunting?" Harry asked. "I know you're biologically a lot like wolves..."

"Well, it has been kind of hard recently," June confided. "Usually it's not that bad, we hunt in little family groups of three to five. We can either do it by just running our prey down or by setting traps – everyone has to know how to set traps, because it's the best way to be sure of feeding yourself if you're unable to work with others."

She frowned, stretching a little. "It's usually deer, rabbits, plenty of other small animals… obviously the smaller it is the less it fills us up, but we're used to eating a lot and then fasting for a while."

"I know that, yeah," Harry agreed, thinking about the wolves in the Belgariad books and what Poledra had said when she was pretending to just be a wolf. (Or was that the right word? She'd started as a wolf, after all.) "So… hunting a bit like wolves, but also a bit like humans?"

"Yep," June agreed. "Hmm, what else… well, I know humans write things down a lot, but as you've probably noticed I wasn't very good at that. Most of how we remember things is telling stories."

"And singing?" Harry guessed.

"And singing, yes," June confirmed.

"That's actually great," Harry smiled. "Though I might have trouble writing the stories and songs…"

June tilted her head. "Hmm…"

* * *

When Harry did the last Dungeons and Dragons Club meeting of the year, he introduced them to the werewolf tribe in the middle of Greenwood the Great just like he'd originally planned. They had a few jobs for the group, like dealing with some nearby trolls, but mostly Harry just had it as a kind of differently flavoured version of the time the Fellowship had stopped by in Lothlorien or Rivendell – a kind of chance to rest, away from the stress of travelling, and take as long as they wanted to stock up.

Harry had to try hard not to giggle when he described the werewolves gathering around a fire to sing one of their old songs, and June began singing from where she'd been hiding behind one of the desks.

It was certainly fun.

* * *

By the time the Christmas Holidays rolled around, Hogwarts looked a lot like a Christmas card. Snow hung off the spires and battlements and covered the grounds, light and fluffy and trodden with paths leading down to the Quidditch pitch and to Hogsmeade, and a giant twenty-foot tree outside courtesy of Hagrid and strewn with magical lights by Professor Flitwick only deepened the resemblance.

That thought was what led Harry to use his camera again. The day after the end of term itself and the day before everyone who was going home for the holidays set off by train, Harry flew up to a good spot overlooking the castle and took several pictures to use for Christmas cards.

Some of his friends got involved as well, not just Dean – who laughingly refused a suggestion to paint his crow-belly red and call him a robin – but more than two dozen students from several houses and years. Blaise in particular roped Daphne and Tracy into getting involved, and Daphne dragged her slightly annoyed sister into getting involved in turn, and the four of them ended up with a very nice picture of Blaise, Daphne, Tracy and Astoria standing next to the giant tree and waving at the camera.

Some of the others didn't go quite so well – the Smiths simply couldn't stand still for long enough to make the photo work – but Harry felt quite proud of how well the idea had gone. It wasn't something anyone could share with any Muggle relatives not in the know, but it was still nice to have. He supposed.

Then Hermione, Neville and Dean all went back down to London, and as the train left Harry perched on top of the battlements and wondered about visiting friends.

He'd visited quite a few of his friends before, usually over the summer holidays, but there were some he hadn't visited either. It was hard to know if he'd be able to ask about going to visit the Smiths (though it would probably be very interesting), while visiting Blaise sounded nice but he had the vague idea that it was probably a good idea for Sirius in particular to steer well clear.

Harry then wondered if he should ask June about visiting her pack – they were, after all, only over in the Forbidden Forest, though because it was Forbidden he should probably check with Professor Dumbledore first – and that led to him thinking about going down into the Black Lake for a visit to Clan MacUalraig.

He hadn't been swimming since his last moult, come to think of it, so if he was able to cast one of those spells like the bubble head charm to breathe underwater he'd be able to find out if he was better at swimming now.

It was a thought, anyway, and he went to go and find Tiobald to offer to melt a hole in the ice over the Black Lake if the Selkie needed it.

* * *

"Okay, Harry, here we go," Sirius announced. "Ready?"

Harry nodded.

"It's kind of a tricky spell, so watch how I do it first," Sirius added. "There isn't much to damage out here, but we might get unlucky."

Harry had to admit that Meade Hill, just outside Hogsmeade and currently covered with about a foot of snow, probably _was_ quite hard to damage with a mis-cast spell.

He watched as Sirius moved his wand in a tricky movement, first flicking it _slightly_ forwards and then raising the wand high into the air.

"_Ignis Verberaque!"_ he incanted, bringing the wand down again in a sharp movement, and fire curled out of the tip of his wand. It formed a kind of long rope of fire, moving like a whip, which crashed into the ground and melted a wiggly line out of the snow.

That extinguished it, except for the little bit still attached to Sirius' wand, and he made that little bit coil up into a spiral before ending the spell with a quick flick.

"Can you see why I think this is a good next one?" he asked.

Harry frowned, thinking. "Well… it's a fire spell, so it's all part of heading towards being able to cast Fiendfyre. And it's a spell which is about not just making fire but controlling it, which is the same thing."

"Exactly," Sirius nodded, impressed. "_And_ it's cool."

"Shouldn't that be hot?" Harry asked. "The _ground_ is cool."

"I sometimes can't tell if that's deliberate or not," Sirius grumbled, and Harry did his best not to smile in triumph. "All right, now you try – wand movement first."

Harry copied the wand movement, first with his paw and then with his tail, until Sirius pronounced himself satisfied. Then he cast the spell, wand in his paw for the first use, and got a hawser-like thick rope of fire that just fell straight down despite his best efforts.

"Not too much," Sirius cautioned. "Remember, you want it thin enough to control and hot enough to do the job, but for now we'll just work on thin."

"Right," Harry agreed, and tried again. The result was sort of lumpy and uneven, instead of the whip of fire that they wanted, but it was getting better.

"I can see why we're doing this one when it's snowed," he admitted. "How long did you take to get it right?"

"A while," Sirius replied. "Let's try again."

* * *

Because he and Ron were the only people in their dorm over the holidays, Harry set his tent up and slept in that instead of in his Hogwarts four-poster.

That was partly because he liked the idea of taking the blankets and duvets – both summer and winter – from the two bedrooms in his tent and piling them all up together, making a thick, soft pile that he could sleep under. It wasn't anything he _needed_ to do, but it was just fun.

It did make him wonder something, though.

Emerging from his pile of furnishings, Harry checked the time – it was still only about nine in the evening – and wandered out to the main Gryffindor Third Year Boys Dorm Room.

It really needed a better name than that.

"Hey, Ron?" he asked, softly. "Are you still up?"

"Of course, yeah, it's not _that_ late," Ron replied. "I know it's Christmas Eve, but there's no point going to bed too early."

He pointed his glowing wand down by the side of his bed. "Want a game of chess?"

"Sure," Harry agreed. "I was wondering, though – why don't you go home for Christmas?"

"Honestly?" Ron asked, setting out the board, then shrugged as the pieces moved into place. "It's kind of Weasley tradition, I think Bill started it. He decided to steer clear from the madhouse it was at home during Christmas, and it kind of worked out for him, so Charlie did the same and it sort of caught on."

"But now there's basically no other Weasleys back at your house," Harry pointed out. "So going back there might be quieter."

"Yeah, but..." Ron shrugged again. "You just know that if I went back home the Twins would follow me."

Harry was the white side this time, and he frowned for a bit before pointing. "Right king's pawn forwards one square. And you're probably right."

"King's knight to F6," Ron countered. "Why do you ask?"

"It's just..." Harry began, then shrugged his wings. "Different experiences growing up, I suppose. My aunt and uncle are happy not to see me, which is fine, and if I want to see Sirius he's so close I don't need to take the train back to London for it. You've got a really big family, but you're so used to it that sometimes peace and quiet is better."

He nodded to himself. "And… King's Bishop forwards one square."

"Playing defensive," Ron noted. "Well, this is just a game for the heck of it… King's Rook's Pawn to H5. And I never really thought of it that way, huh."

He crossed his legs on his bed, looking down at the chess board. "Sorry if that makes it seem like I'm not understanding how you feel, or anything."

"You don't need to," Harry assured him, chuckling. "I've met most of your family, and back at primary school I sometimes flew up onto the roof to read books so I didn't have to deal with my cousin."

"Hey, that's a point, I can join Percy up on the roof," Ron brightened. "That'll make summers a bit easier to deal with."

He snapped his fingers. "That reminds me! You know the Quidditch World Cup is in Britain this time? Well, Dad's been talking about us all going to see the final – obviously we don't know who's going to be _in_ it yet – but if you and Sirius were planning on going we could make it a joint trip?"

"I'll ask Sirius about it, but that sounds pretty good," Harry agreed. "Only… is it Britain? In football I think England has a separate team to Scotland and Wales and stuff."

"Well, there's English and Scottish _teams_ and stuff, but the _stadium_ is in Britain," Ron replied. "I think they picked somewhere in Devon-"

"Next move, please?" the White Queen asked.

"Whoops," Harry said. "Queen's pawn forward one space?"

* * *

That night, Harry had a dream about… something or other. It had been a good one, he remembered that much, but there wasn't much else that stuck with him except that there'd been a really big airship involved.

Blinking and yawning as he crawled out of his pile of blankets, he found a small note by his bed. It wasn't folded up, and he picked it up to read.

_Mr Harry Dragon Potter,_

_We is sorry that your presents is outside the tent. We thought it wasn't polite to come in and put things where you might not want them._

Harry smiled, appreciating the thought, though after a moment he frowned instead.

If they hadn't wanted to come in, then… how had the note got here?

Shrugging, he picked up his glasses and headed through the kitchen for the door of his tent. When he pulled the flap aside, however, he saw presents piled up in the opening as if to block him in.

"Harry?" Ron asked. "That you?"

Fabric rustled, and Ron sniggered.

"You'd better start opening them now," he suggested. "Or you'll be trapped."

Harry bit down on a giggle, picked one of the nearest packages, and pulled it out of the pile to open. To his surprise, it was a book he hadn't seen before – and quite a peculiar one as well.

It announced itself to be _Harry Potter and the Dreadful Misunderstanding_, and it had a picture of a black dragon on the cover – as well as the same human-boy-Harry that some of the books he'd seen back before the start of first year had. As Harry tilted it, the cover began to move, and he watched as the black dragon and human-boy-Harry started closely examining a checklist and a calendar respectively.

Also included was a little note from Professor Dumbledore, which explained that he was sorry that he'd been unable to find any socks that might be of interest to Harry and that the only thing he could find was a book. He was well aware that Harry had plenty of books already, so hopefully this was not one of them – unlike socks, books were a little more awkward to have more than one of a particular type.

Harry flipped through the book to see what sort of thing it was, and found that there was a bit halfway through when a Harry was arguing with a Potter about which of them should be allowed to use the name Harry.

He had the feeling that it would be a very peculiar book to read.

There was a bit in the front which was nice, though, where it said that any resemblance between the actual Harry Potter and any of the characters in the book was a complete coincidence – citing as evidence how they hadn't even known he was a dragon until it turned up in the news.

Putting that aside to read later, preferably when he had a free day so he wouldn't get too confused, Harry moved on to the next presents in the pile.

Ron had got him a broom compass, and apologized for not getting him anything bigger, but Harry thought the compass was a nice idea anyway – it was adjustable, and at the size Harry was at the moment it fit quite nicely onto the index finger of his right paw. It would be quite useful for flying long distances, though Harry had read the Swallows and Amazons books once and so he knew that you had to check the compass to see which way to go and then go there (instead of just looking at it the whole time).

Hermione's gift was a book called The Forge, which her note said was the first in a series of books which were kind of like a re-imagining of some of the bits in the Roman Empire book Harry had got her. She didn't say _which_ bits, in fact she specifically said that Harry should try and work it out, and that she hoped he liked it.

Then Dean had made him something, which was always nice to see. It came rolled up in a tube, and when it was unrolled there was a great big portrait-size drawing of a white dragon just flaring his wings to alight on a pillar of rock.

As he examined it, it suddenly animated, and the white dragon finished his landing. A tiny green dragon flew over from the corner of the drawing, fluttering around the white dragon's head, and he smiled with green-blue eyes whirling before launching himself back into the air.

A red star shone overhead, and Harry suddenly recognized it as Ruth somewhere on Pern. He wasn't sure how Dean had managed to animate it – that wasn't a Charm they'd learned yet, so he'd probably need help from someone in one of the upper years unless they taught it in the Art Club.

Neville's present, on the other hand, was made of two parts. The first was a spider plant, along with a note that told Harry that now there were so many spider plants at Longbottom House that Harry could do him a favour and take one of them to reduce the numbers.

That gave Harry a chuckle, and then the second thing was a big box of chocolates.

"Did Dean do you a picture as well?" Ron asked.

Harry showed Ron, squeezing past the now-smaller pile to demonstrate, and Ron looked duly impressed.

"He did this one for me," he added, holding it up and letting it unroll to the bottom. It showed a red-squirrel dangling from underneath a branch and reaching for an acorn, then began moving with the squirrel snagging his prize and swinging back around to the top of the branch. He ran along the branch, crouched, and jumped off, then came back into the picture from the other side and spun around the branch to hang off it again.

"Wonder how he found time to do them all," Ron admitted. "If he did them for Hermione and Nev as well."

"Maybe he did them at the Art Club?" Harry suggested. "It's weekly, so he'd have time for… what, one or two sessions for each picture? Depends how long he was planning it."

* * *

Most people got Harry books, some of them Wizarding and some of them Muggle, and he was pretty much okay with that situation. It was rare (though not unknown) that he'd find a book he didn't like, and even if he did it would still make a good addition to his hoard as something to sleep on.

Then there was the package from Mrs. Weasley, which contained a new and larger jumper (one which Harry guessed would fit him until his next moult without stretching, unlike his current jumper which was showing the strain slightly) and a great deal of homemade sweets. It wasn't the first time, but Harry was very impressed with the quality of it all and felt quite pleased by getting that.

"Oh, come on, not again," Ron grumbled, though it sounded like he was barely avoiding sniggering.

Harry looked up, and Ron held up a copy of _The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin_ by Beatrix Potter.

"Everyone's getting me squirrel stuff this year," Ron explained, moving on to another present. "Or nut stuff. It's funny, but it's a bit less funny ten times in a row."

"Open mine, then," Harry suggested, moving past his now much diminished pile to tap a big oblong parcel.

Ron leaned over the side of his bed to grab it, clearly slightly dubious about whether Harry was having a laugh, and tore off the wrapping paper.

His griffin statuette flew down to collect the paper and took it up to a big rustly nest it was building atop a shelf, but Ron didn't notice.

"Science experiments for kids?" he asked, reading the title.

"Yeah, it's all stuff that Muggle kids or young teens are supposed to be able to do with stuff they can get hold of cheaply," Harry explained. "I had a look through when I got it, and I'm pretty sure I can get the stuff for most of them in Fort William, so let me know one you want to do a few days in advance and I can get the stuff for it."

"Nice," Ron pronounced, leafing through the book. "Yeah, some of these look pretty good… mountain building?"

Harry craned his neck to see, and they read the description through.

"I didn't realize that was how mountains were made," Ron admitted. "Neat."

He picked up one of the last things on his pile, which turned out to be a wooden box. Opening it, he reared back in surprise as a paper crane flew out.

It circled his head once, wings buzzing, then landed back down on the bedsheet and unfolded.

Three seconds of shifting paper later and a book with the silver-embossed title of _The Animagus Book Of Being An Animagus_ was resting on the bed.

Ron picked it up and opened it, and on the first page was a handwritten note from Professor McGonagall expressing her congratulations.

"That was cool," Harry voiced. "I wonder if anyone else got one?"

"Probably," Ron agreed.

Harry went back to his own present pile, and there were only two things left. The first was his present from his relatives, which turned out to be a single unadorned pencil and a list of future chores.

It was touching that they'd thought about him, and Harry absently began shaving little bits of wood off the end of the pencil to see if he could sharpen it by talon. Then he got to the very last present, which (as he'd expected it would be) was from Sirius.

The accompanying letter said that he hoped Harry enjoyed what was inside, and if it wasn't tasty enough to qualify as a full Christmas present there might be something else they could get. Now curious, Harry undid the paper and stared.

It was a Game Boy box.

"What in Merlin's name is that?" Ron asked, as Harry picked up the box to find the opening – and found that, yes, there was indeed a Game Boy inside.

"It's a Muggle game thing," Harry replied, wondering briefly how to explain it to his friend. "Dudley had one… actually, he had two, because he broke one. It makes… sort of, moving pictures, and you press the buttons to change do things."

He frowned, searching for an example for a moment. "So on the screen it might show a picture of a wizard, and you press one button to make him jump and another button to make him cast a Stunning spell."

"And what about making him cast a different spell?" Ron said. "Like transfiguration?"

"I don't think they know enough about wizards to make that work properly," Harry said. "And the game in this one is, um… something about a zelda. I _think_ that's some kind of elf, but I'm not very clear on the details."

Dudley had mostly just complained about how the game wasn't exciting, if he was remembering the right set of games.

He flicked the power switch idly, then turned it around to have a look – and blinked.

The battery light had lit up red, and a set of black letters saying "Nintendo" slid down the screen with one of those registered-trademark 'R's accompanying it.

Then it went 'fwing!' and a moment later began showing a black-and-green animation of the sea.

"I thought Muggle stuff didn't work at Hogwarts," Ron said, shifting so he could watch as a ship came into the picture. They both saw someone with pointed ears trying to sail the ship through what was apparently a storm, then get struck by lightning.

Harry turned the Game Boy off, every bit as confused as Ron sounded.

"Maybe it's like how Dean's watch works?" Ron suggested. "That's got electricity in it, doesn't it? And so does this?"

"Yeah, but all the books say Muggle technology like radar and computers and stuff doesn't work at Hogwarts," Harry replied, frowning. "And those use electricity as well."

Despite his frown, though, he did feel quite impressed. It seemed that Sirius had got him a mystery for Christmas.

Even if he hadn't meant to.

* * *

AN:

* * *

There was more of a delay for this chapter pair than usual, and that's because I buggered up my computer. I'm now on a new computer.

Anyway. Getting a project for Christmas is nice.


	43. Getting To The Bottom Of Things

Despite the really quite baffling issue – Harry immediately started taking notes on what they'd noticed so far, because Hermione was going to want them – there wasn't time to experiment, because it wasn't much longer before they'd be heading down to Hogsmeade to visit Neville.

What turned out to cause problems, though, was that Percy was nowhere to be found. Fred and George were found easily enough, down in the common room trying out a Frisbee Hermione had got them, but Percy wasn't there _or_ up with the other Seventh-Years like Oliver Wood.

Harry did think that if Percy _had_ been there, or if Hermione had been there, then they'd have pointed out that the Frisbee was an _outdoors_ thing. But they weren't, and the Gryffindor Prefects who weren't Percy had gone home for Christmas.

That thought made Harry wonder if maybe Percy had been up late last night doing Prefect things, or possibly Head Boy things, or maybe if he'd had to get up early that morning to do Prefect things. Any of those sounded possible, and when Percy finally came into Gryffindor Common Room ten minutes before they were supposed to be at Neville's house that was the first thing Harry asked.

"Well… head boy things, in a way," Percy said. "I… suppose we are a bit late, aren't we?"

"How are we going to get there on time?" Ron asked. "It takes ages to walk down to Hogsmeade."

"We could go by-" Fred began, but George shook his head at him and Fred stopped talking.

"What were you going to say?" Percy asked. "Is this about those secret passages you think I don't know about?"

"No, it's about the secret passages I think you think you know about, but you don't really know about them because we're thinking of different secret passages," George said fluidly. "Anyway, it's not about those either, because we could just fly down."

"That was what I was going to say," Fred protested. "Did you stop me just so you'd be the one saying the idea?"

"Not at all, oh brother my brother," George answered, then paused. "Where did we run into that one?"

"Probably a poem," Fred suggested.

"You twits _do_ know we're getting later, right?" Ron asked. "Get to the point!"

"Well," George resumed. "Percy can just fly, and Harry can fly, and the rest of us can be light enough to hitch a lift on Harry, if he'll let us."

"Sure," Harry agreed, glancing out the window. "It's snowing pretty hard, though."

"Let's just go with brooms," Fred said. "Like I was originally thinking."

"Or we could go with brooms," George agreed.

* * *

Percy set off immediately, while Harry waited for long enough to help Fred, George and Ron all get out the window one by one. Since it was hard to climb through a narrow window while carrying a broomstick, he just took the broomsticks out himself and then gave each Weasley one as they slipped through the opening in Animagus form.

Once that was all sorted, he asked the highly amused Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail to shut the window for him and let go from where he was clinging to the side of Hogwarts castle. Catching up to the quartet of Weasleys was easy enough, despite the flurries of snow, and they all landed in Hogsmeade with a soft _crunch_ from the sheer amount of snow.

* * *

Harry was the second through the Floo, just behind Ron, and spread his wings to slow himself down as he landed.

The room looked about the same as when he'd last seen it, back in the summer before Second Year, except that there was a dusting of golden tinsel around all the visible portraits.

"Do you like it?" asked a portrait in a cavalier uniform, with a little brass plate underneath him describing him as Rupert Longbottom and as having lived in the 17th century. "We like to dress up a little for special occasions!"

"Though Christmas does blur together a little after so many," added another portrait, this one a lady in a wimple which waved around like a flag as she nodded her head. "Lovely to see you again. How's the dragoning?"

"Going fairly well," Harry summarized, as Fred and then George arrived (or possibly George and then Fred).

"Lovely to hear," said the lady in the wimple (Violetta Longbottom, 1103-1231). "Rupert, do be a dear and let them know guests are arriving?"

"Of course!" Rupert agreed, and sidled out of frame.

* * *

Hermione and Dean had already arrived, and when they went into the main room both were in a conversation with a plump older woman.

"It's good to see you all," Neville said. "I know you've been here before, Harry, but is this the first time the rest of you have been here?"

"I was here once when I was five," Percy volunteered. "I don't remember it well, I'm afraid."

"Well, the first thing I need to tell you is that the bathroom's up the stairs over there," Neville explained, pointing. "It's on the third floor but you only have to go up one flight of steps, I know, it's weird."

"Ah, these must be Neville's other school friends!" said a bluff older man, coming over and shaking Harry's paw, then the hands of the Weasleys one at a time. "It's tremendous to see Neville's picked up just the sort of friends he needs."

"This is my Great Uncle Algie," Neville introduced. "Great Uncle, these are Harry Potter, and Ron, Fred, George and Percy Weasley."

"Yes, I've heard a lot about them," Algie said, nodding. "Neville really does like you all, you know. You're very kind."

"Kind?" Harry repeated. "Why?"

"Well, being Neville's friends, of course," Algie said. "He's a good lad as well, of course. Very sweet, no denying that."

Harry wasn't really sure whether he should be feeling annoyed on Neville's behalf or not. Great Uncle Algie didn't seem _unpleasant_, but it was hard for Harry to forget the letter from last month.

He quickly checked he wasn't growling.

* * *

Harry had to seek quick guidance from Neville on what you did in this sort of party. He'd been to several different kinds of parties (or at least heard them through the door in the case of Dudley's party, depending on exactly how Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia wanted to handle it) and Sirius enjoyed having people laughing and playing games and occasionally pranks, while at parties in the Gryffindor Common Room… it was more or less the same, actually.

But parties in some of the books Harry had read were quite different, with people having icy conversations with one another, and Harry didn't want to try one of them during the other type of party.

"Oh, um… well, not being rowdy is good," Neville said, frowning slightly. "I think the idea is that you stand around making conversations – usually quiet ones – until it's time to eat, and we're eating in an hour or two."

Harry nodded, grateful for the help.

"Oh, and I've already asked Percy to help if Fred and George start something they shouldn't," Neville added.

"Good call, mate," Ron nodded. "Fred and George are like that."

"Hey, we're reformed," George said.

"Into rodents, maybe," Ron muttered back.

"I think you'll find you're more the rodent out of us weasels, Nutkins," Fred said smugly.

Ron grumbled something incomprehensible, then shook his head when Harry asked for clarification.

"You'd think I'd be used to it by now," he confided.

* * *

Still not sure exactly how to start the sort of conversations that Neville had mentioned, Harry went to see what Hermione and Dean were talking about.

When he got a little closer, it became clear that they were actually doing very little of the talking – most of it was being done by the plump woman, who Harry guessed was probably Neville's Great Aunt Enid.

"What I do wonder is when you'll be seeing your first unicorn," she was saying. "It's a truly wonderful thing to see, even an adult, but a foal is even better – when I did Care of Magical Creatures we got to see two of each. I've always thought it must have been a family, a colt and a filly and their sire and dam."

"I'm sure we will, they're in the textbook," Hermione began, and Great Aunt Enid tutted.

"Oh, that book doesn't tell you the whole story, you know," she confided. "There's shockingly little information on some beasts – why, it barely spares even a page on the varieties of winged horse. You'd think it would make clear just what the difference between an Abraxan and a Thestral is, but of course Newt Scamander's too busy dealing with making sure everyone knows the history of the classification of Beasts to go into detail on beasts so different they may as well be different categories like with dragons."

She spotted Harry, and smiled. "Oh, and speaking of dragons – you must be Harry Potter. Neville's told us _ever_ so much about you in his letters, and when we visit."

Harry waved hello.

"Neville was the first wizarding friend I made, except for Mr. Hagrid," he said. "It's nice to meet his relatives."

"A pleasure indeed," Great Aunt Enid said.

Harry noticed that Hermione and Dean were looking distinctly relieved, but before he could quite wonder why there was a loud whistling noise which interrupted everyone.

Fred had his hands over his ears, and gouts of blue steam were leaking through the crevices between his fingers to rise towards the ceiling and flow upstairs. Then another whistling sound heralded that the same thing had begun with George, except that it was red steam.

"My goodness!" Great Aunt Enid said, fluttering her hand over her chest for a moment.

"What happened?" Percy asked. "Did you try one of your experiments before you came here?"

"Experiments?" Fred repeated, slightly too loud. "No, no, not at all!"

"The only thing we had to eat was some chocolate truffles Lee Jordan sent us!" George added, also slightly too loud. "And we're not stupid, we wouldn't eat something from Lee Jordan we recognized, but we didn't recognize this."

"And we know _everything_ that Zonkos and the other joke shops sell," Fred took up the thread. "And Lee's always been better at Transfiguration than Potions or Charms."

"How did you know it was from Lee Jordan?" Dean asked.

"That's what the label said!" George answered.

Harry noticed that Neville's Great Uncle Algie was frowning, looking more confused than annoyed, and that Granny Longbottom was shaking her head. He wasn't sure in what way, though.

"Have you two perhaps considered that just _anybody_ can write things on a label?" Percy asked, then took out his wand and waved it. The whistling sound and the steam stopped, and both twins took their hands away from their ears.

"Now you mention it, Perce, that does sound like a good argument," Fred admitted.

"But who could it be that we might have annoyed enough that they'd do that?" George added.

"There _was_ that Howler we sent to our esteemed rivals in Slytherin," Fred mused, putting his hand to his chin. "The one where we sang that Muggle song Padfoot showed us."

If Harry had to guess, it would probably be that song that asked what love was. It was a bit of an odd song, in Harry's mind, because after asking that it immediately started asking the same person not to hurt them.

It didn't seem to make much sense to ask someone what love was if they kept hurting someone, but maybe it was just how it sounded.

"You sent those two a Howler with a Muggle song in it?" Percy repeated, and then the whistling and the steam came back again.

This time Fred had yellow and George had green, unless Harry had been mixed up about which one was which all along (a distinct possibility).

"I'm just going to stop the whistling," the Head Boy added. "Unless you'd rather I stop the steam as well, Madam Longbottom?"

"That would be preferable," Granny Longbottom said curtly.

"You might be doing this for a while, Percy," George commented cheerfully. "We each had eight of them."

* * *

Perhaps fortunately, when the conversations started again Neville's Great Aunt Enid wasn't just talking about how things had been in her day. Instead, since Harry was there, she began asking about what Harry was like and how he was different from other dragons.

That was a topic Harry was interested in talking about, especially since he could mention Nora, and though he didn't give _all_ the details of the weird things going on with how Nora had learned to speak (partly because he was fairly sure the Marauder's Map side of things was still secret) he did mention how he was able to speak Dragonish with Nora but that he'd never met another dragon who could speak it.

Dean was able to volunteer with how he'd done the drawings for the monograph that established the Black-Backed Bookwyrm as a separate type of dragon, and Great Aunt Enid nodded and said that was very impressive – though she also admitted doubts as to whether that type of dragon was a type of dragon that would get into _Fantastic Beasts_. That in turn led to talking about the difference between sphinxes, selkies and three headed dogs, all of whom were currently students at Hogwarts but all of them treated differently by the classification system.

Harry quite enjoyed talking about it, though he wasn't sure how much of that was just that he wasn't being talked _at_ like Hermione and Dean had originally been, and it was a bit of a surprise when Granny Longbottom announced that it was time for dinner.

* * *

The Christmas Dinner was sort of a mix between a lunch type meal and a dinner type meal, about two in the afternoon, and it was certainly full of all kinds of food. There oddest thing Harry spotted offhand was a plate of smoked salmon on toast, which Neville explained quietly was something they'd been having as long as he could remember, and then there were all the normal sorts of things from a Christmas dinner as well.

Yorkshire puddings, four different kinds of stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, pumpkin sauce – which seemed to be normal for a _Wizarding_ Christmas dinner – and two different flavours of gravy. There were roast vegetables, boiled vegetables, potatoes prepared in so many ways Harry was sure he'd spend the next week wondering if he'd tried them all, roast turkey, roast chicken, roast lamb, sausages, other sausages wrapped in bacon, yet more sausages wrapped in pastry, and at that point Harry had to stop because his plate looked like it was about to fall over.

About fifteen minutes into the meal, Tandy told Granny Longbottom that the last of the puddings that needed it were in the oven, and Neville's grandmother had thanked her for her hard work before inviting her to take a place at the table with all the wizards. It felt a bit oddly formal, which was strange because Harry was fairly sure he'd seen Tandy eating with Neville and his gran during the month he'd stayed here before second year, but maybe it was a special Christmas tradition.

It was the first time in a while he'd been involved with a meal that was enough to qualify as a feast – it was certainly good enough for one, anyway, and there were a lot of people here – without there being any dishes specially made for him, but Harry didn't mind that either. He was sitting next to his friends, there was good food, and he'd given people presents they enjoyed today.

It all gave him a warm feeling right through his body, though that could have just been the food by itself.

Or possibly the fact he was a dragon.

* * *

"It is ten minutes until the puddings is needing to be taken out," Tandy said quietly.

"Then go ahead, Tandy," Granny Longbottom replied. "And thank you for your company."

Tandy slipped off her chair – which had been provided with a cushion – and headed into the kitchen, and Great Uncle Algie nodded after her.

"She's a fine worker," he said. "Always makes our visits a treat!"

He nodded to the nearest Weasley, which happened to be Ron. "Neville tells us that you've got yourselves a House-Elf as well. How's he working out?"

"Well, we like him," Ron said, a bit startled at being put on the spot. "But the food's always been really good, because Mum's good at cooking, it's just that the style's sometimes a bit different. And we've not really _got_ a House Elf. Dobby's just… staying with us, really, it's a bit complicated."

Great Uncle Algie nodded. "Of course. Taking in those less fortunate, it's a fine instinct. Not that it's the first time you lads have done it, of course, I'm very grateful you've done it for my grandnephew."

There was a little _clink_ as Percy put his fork down.

"I'm not entirely sure you understand Neville very well, sir," he said. "I'm not one of his closest friends – I'm four years above him – but I can assure you that the Sorting Hat placed Neville in Gryffindor and we are entirely glad to have him."

"Yes, of course," Great Uncle Algie agreed, tilting his head slightly. "Wouldn't want to suggest anything else. The lad's brave for overcoming his disadvantages."

"Like what?" Hermione asked, and Harry could hear a bit of a tremble in her voice – which wasn't really all that surprising, because if Harry had tried to say something he was fairly sure _he'd_ have a tremble as well at the moment. "Neville's been doing better than half the year, and that's with a wand he just doesn't work well with – now he's got the right wand he's going to do much better!"

"I don't see why you're so upset," Great Uncle Algie retorted. "You don't need to defend Neville from compliments, and it's a compliment."

"Dear-" Great Aunt Enid began.

"I agree with Hermione," Dean was already saying. "You're basically saying Neville's thick, as well as that he's brave. But that's _worse_ than him just being brave, not better!"

Harry felt like he wasn't sure what to say, and he also didn't know if he should try to say anything anyway because if he was going to say something it would probably come out as a growl.

"Neville Longbottom!" said Granny Longbottom sharply, cutting across the whole argument. "Don't think you're going to get away with not eating your greens like _that_, young man!"

Everyone's heads turned to look – Harry included – and Lapcat tilted his head, before licking at his big feline paw.

"I'm _quite_ aware that cats can eat vegetables," Granny Longbottom continued, still sharply. "You're the one who put them on your plate, so now you can _finish_ them!"

Lapcat nodded, looking chastened, and began licking up some carrots.

"…Merlin," Great Uncle Algie said, into the silence.

* * *

Neville's change seemed to break the tension, which was a relief, and after that the puddings were really nice. They weren't quite the same kind of elaborate fancies that the Hogwarts elves put together, with far more of them to split the work – but Tandy still put together a chocolate bread and butter pudding, a plum pudding, a tower of profiteroles and a yule log made with caramel and white chocolate instead of the usual milk and dark chocolate.

Harry had a bit of all of them, and as far as he could tell so did everyone else. (Though Neville had to change back to being human before he could have any of the rich chocolate bread and butter pudding, because apparently while cats were okay with vegetables they might be a bit iffy about human chocolate.)

Then the afternoon was mostly taken up with what Harry felt could only be described as lazing around.

Dean taught everyone how to play Pictionary, though it didn't really help that he was the only person in the room who could draw anything recognizable – or maybe it did, because it was kind of funny when Harry was trying to get _someone_ to realize he was drawing a bird and Ron kept insisting that it was clearly Galvin Gudgeon, the new Seeker for the Chudley Cannons.

* * *

When Harry got back to Hogwarts that evening, he wondered if maybe the reason why family gatherings like that usually involved a lot of food was to make sure that people were too full to get into a big fight of some sort.

He mentioned it to Ron, though, and Ron shook his head – pointing out how often Fred and George got into trouble with everyone else and how Mrs. Weasley always cooked a lot of really nice food. Which was a good point.

"Yeah, it's funny like that," Ron agreed, as they headed up the stairs. "I just think it's that you have people you don't usually meet, and people who've met a lot before. So either way there's a way to start an argument, and once one starts one year you're kind of going to expect it next time."

Harry nodded, following that.

"Is there anyone in your family like that?" he asked.

"Well… Mum's got a second cousin who's an accountant?" Ron volunteered. "We don't see him much these days – don't really talk about him, either."

"Why not?" Harry said, more than a little surprised.

"It's not that he doesn't have magic," Ron clarified. "Or not directly… the problem is that he got married, or that's what Bill says. So he can never come around to any of our houses, because his wife doesn't know about magic and we can't tell her, and we're all afraid of making a mistake when we go around to his place."

He shrugged. "Of course, when I say 'we' there I mean Weasleys, because I've only met him once and I was four. So we've sort of just… drifted apart?"

Harry nodded, absorbing that, and wondering how tricky it must be for someone who couldn't tell their relatives about magic.

It was a good reason for people with magic to mostly associate with other people with magic, really, and Harry did sort-of wonder how many times a wizard marrying a muggle was because the muggle already knew about magic beforehand.

That was too tricky a topic for Christmas, though, and Harry went to call Sirius on his mirror.

* * *

Harry's Dog-father answered straight away, and the view through the mirror moved dizzily as Sirius propped it up against a bookshelf.

"_Harry, good to see you – and Merry Christmas!"_ he said, adjusting a paper crown. _"I hope you enjoyed yourself – I did, but it just wasn't as much fun without you!"_

Harry nodded. "I did, Sirius, and I'm glad you enjoyed yourself as well. And I'm really glad you helped Neville to become an Animagus."

"_My pleasure, of course,"_ Sirius smiled. _"Molly – that's to you – told me just this afternoon she was grateful that she knows Fred and George can get something done if they apply themselves. But why Neville specifically?"_

That took a while to explain, and Sirius looked quite upset in the middle of it, though the ending was entertaining enough that he was laughing by the time Harry finished the tale.

"_Transforming at the dinner table!"_ he laughed. _"Merlin's beard… I wish I'd thought to try that. The looks on my parents' faces would have been priceless."_

His laughter was infectious, and Harry smiled as well before asking Sirius if he was enjoying his present.

"_Sort of,"_ Sirius said. _"I'm not entirely sure how to put it together, but I'm enjoying the _idea_ of it. How did you know I liked motorbikes?"_

"Well, there's your motorbike," Harry said, counting off on his claws. "The one you've lent Hagrid, I mean."

Hagrid had tried to insist that he should give the motorbike back, but Sirius had insisted harder that Hagrid should keep it and had won the not-an-argument. It had been quite funny to watch, especially when Sirius pointed out that if he had it he'd only get overexcited and drive it over London one evening.

"_Okay, that's a good point by itself,"_ Sirius said. _"No need to keep going on about it."_

He lifted the pile of bits into view, most of them just poured out of the box the model had come in. _"Only one question. Where's the engine?"_

"Muggle models don't have engines," Harry told him. "But you could make it one that flies?"

"_I'll definitely have to think about it,"_ Sirius promised, putting the pile down again. _"Now! I hope my present was tasty, unless you're saving it for later. Either way, though, here's the other thing I got you-"_

"Hold on, Sirius," Harry asked, and Sirius stopped.

By way of explanation, Harry reached for the Game Boy and held it up to the mirror. Then he turned it on.

Sirius watched in silence as the light lit up, and the opening played, until the screen said 'The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening'. And '1993 Nintendo'.

Then he said _"What?"_

"It works," Harry said, though really that was sort of obvious now he thought about it. "And yes, I am at Hogwarts."

"_Bloody hell,"_ Sirius said, sitting down hard and nearly vanishing out of the view of the mirror. _"And I was all proud of enchanting a lava lamp with heating and lighting charms."_

* * *

A little after breakfast on Boxing Day, Harry climbed up the steps to the Headmaster's Office.

It was sort of funny how often he'd been up the steps, really, especially because he'd never been in trouble any of the times it had happened.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said, smiling, as Harry reached the top of the stairs. "It's lovely to see you. Everything all right?"

"Yes, Professor," Harry confirmed.

"Not got any unexpected problems with Tom Riddle, I hope?" Dumbledore added.

"Well… no," Harry said, a little confused. "I would have mentioned it when I asked when I could see you."

"Ah, you see," Dumbledore chuckled. "That's very considerate of you, but it seems so very many people enjoy keeping something a surprise so they can tell me all at once."

He made an inviting little gesture with his hand, and Harry duly sat down in one of the armchairs.

"Did you enjoy your present, Harry?" Dumbledore added. "I can only apologize that I was unable to locate any socks."

"I didn't have the chance to read it much, I'm afraid," Harry told him. "But I liked what I read."

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced. "It is always preferable to like what you read; it makes it much easier to keep going."

He steepled his fingers. "Though I believe, Harry, that if you had simply wanted to thank me for my choice of present you could have done that in the Great Hall. And since clearly Tom Riddle is not involved, I must confess myself at something of a loss."

By way of reply, Harry took out the Game Boy.

"This is a Muggle toy, Professor," he said. "It's sort of… a really small computer, and when you turn it on the screen shows how the game is going."

"A game?" Dumbledore repeated, examining it with great interest. "But how do you move the pieces?"

"You use these buttons here to do things," Harry told him, tapping on the directional pad and the A and B buttons. "It sort of… depends on the game, because you can put lots of different games into it."

He pulled out the cartridge to demonstrate, then pushed it back in again.

"A most remarkable device," Dumbledore said. "I must say, I do sometimes wonder how it is that Muggles entertain themselves, but if everyone has one of these then perhaps it is quite easy."

"Not _everyone_ has one of them," Harry replied. "Most people use TVs to stay entertained, or at least I think that's how it works."

Dumbledore nodded in understanding. "Yes, I believe I've seen a TV once before. It was quite remarkable. How _do_ the Muggles make people that small and fit them in a box?"

Harry blinked in surprise, then saw Dumbledore wink at him.

"I must say, Harry," Dumbledore added. "Thank you for showing me one of these machines. Is it one that your relatives got for you? It's such a shame that your Aunt Petunia didn't know such things don't work at Hogwarts."

"Sirius got it for me," Harry clarified. "So it was a relative, I suppose. But…"

He turned the Game Boy on, and turned it around so that Dumbledore could see.

The Headmaster watched in silence as the opening played out to the point where it said the game was either The Legend Of Zelda Link's Awakening or possibly just Nintendo 1993. Cheerful music played from the speaker as he sat and looked at it, and Harry wondered if Dumbledore was thinking about all the magic around Hogwarts and why it was that this machine was working.

Then he looked up.

"Do I press one of the buttons, now?" he asked. "I confess I've not used one of these before."

"I haven't either," Harry admitted.

"Well, there is a button which appears to be labelled… start," Dumbledore said, looking closer. "Would you mind if I..?"

"Oh – go ahead," Harry invited.

Dumbledore pressed the button with a long finger, holding it down until the screen changed and changed again, then smiled. "Ah! It appears I have made something happen."

It looked like there was a naming screen, now, the sort of thing that Dudley usually skipped by naming his person 'A' - or, if he was feeling bored, 'farts'.

"A marvellous experience," Dumbledore pronounced, twirling the Game Boy around and sliding it a little way back towards Harry. "Thank you for sharing it with me."

"Do you know why it's working, Professor?" Harry asked, turning the Game Boy off in case the batteries ran down. "The only electrical Muggle things I've seen working at Hogwarts before are watches."

"Watches are electrical now?" Dumbledore asked. "How marvellous. But no, Harry, I confess I have not the faintest idea."

He tapped his fingers together. "I remember when it was first discovered that electrical things did not work around Hogwarts, however, Harry. And, while I can certainly understand why you might wonder it, we did not just conclude that something did not work because it could not be plugged in."

That hadn't occurred to Harry, and he giggled before being able to stop himself.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "Well, Harry, congratulations for discovering such an oddity. Do keep me up to date if you work out what might be going on – and it seems we may need to update Hogwarts: A History. I imagine your friend Hermione would be very glad to contribute."

"I will, Professor," Harry said, then frowned. "Professor, what things _didn't_ work at Hogwarts?"

"A number of things," Dumbledore told him. "Let me see… ah, I believe there was a mishap with one of those air planes that the Muggles were using back when they were fighting Germany. It was in some sort of trouble and had to land nearby, and of course it was the duty of Professor Merrythought – the Defence professor of the time – to modify the pilot's memory once he left, but the poor fellow was very understanding of the whole situation."

He tapped his chin. "It had… ah, yes, it had a wireless, and one of those funny radar things, but neither of them were working at all. The engine did not start, either, though once Professor Merrythought and I had lifted the air plane away from Hogwarts it all began working just fine. Most peculiar."

Harry had to agree, because it certainly _sounded_ like nothing had worked on the aeroplane.

Maybe they'd need to do some tests.

* * *

The day before term started again, Sirius clapped his hands.

"Okay, Harry!" he called. "Ready?"

Harry nodded.

"This should be pretty good to watch," Ron said, interested. "There's no way I could keep up with all this stuff you're doing, Harry, but it's still cool to see what Sirius is teaching you."

Hermione transformed back from her raptor form. "You could practice some of these spells for Defence, you know, Ron."

"I know I could," Ron agreed. "But Harry's the one who does this fighting magic stuff. Neville might, too – what do you think, Neville?"

"Oh, um, maybe?" Neville asked, sounding a little hesitant. "I'm having enough trouble with the normal spells."

"You won't," Ron told him firmly. "It's a wand problem, not a you problem, and the wand's been fixed."

Neville nodded, understanding that.

"Besides, this bit's something we couldn't do," Ron went on. "We don't have the bits for it."

"I've got wings sometimes," Dean volunteered.

"Yeah, and if this was something involving wings, you'd have a point, mate," Ron countered.

Hermione evidently felt cold, because she went back to her raptor form to enjoy the enchanted blanket on top of her coat of warming feathers.

"Anyway," Sirius coughed. "Harry?"

"I nodded," Harry explained, in case Sirius had missed it.

His wand was held in the holster next to his tail, and he'd already been doing spell casting practice, but right now he was about to try something else.

"Then go ahead," Sirius invited.

"_Ignis Verberaque,"_ Harry incanted, all in one breath, and continued with a short, sharp exhalation as he bobbed his head.

The flame that came out of his mouth was a little thinner than normal, and stayed together longer, but then it just fell apart and unravelled all at once.

"Well, it's a start," Sirius said. "What did that feel like?"

"It didn't feel like much," Harry replied. "Did it look like one of the times I got it wrong?"

"Maybe it was something to do with momentum," Dean suggested. "What's it like when you cast other fire spells with your breath? I've seen you cast bluebell flames, I know that…"

"I need to keep breathing out, but usually it doesn't matter," Harry told him. "This is what it's like when I cast that basic fire spell."

He demonstrated, shooting a little ball of flame that exploded when it hit the snow, then compared it with bluebell flames – which came out in a torrent until he stopped exhaling, though the magical fire kept burning until he cast the counterspell.

"I think that's what's going on, then," Dean nodded. "What do you think, Mr. Black?"

"Sounds good to me," Sirius shrugged. "I'm making this up as I go along, Mr. Bluebird."

Dean looked down at himself uncertainly, turned into his Animagus form, then turned back again. "I'm not blue."

"Yeah, but Blackbird is too accurate," Sirius waved off. "Let's see if it catches on. Anyway, Harry, do you want to try it where you just exhale constantly?"

Harry nodded agreement, and tried again – this time using a slow, steady stream of fire breath instead of the single burst he'd done before.

It worked quite a bit better, with the spell sort of taking hold and keeping Harry's fire breath rising up almost like a serpent, until he lost control and it dropped to _hiss_ into the snow.

"Not bad," Sirius summarized.

"Quick question?" Neville said, raising his hand. "Can we look at that Muggle Studies thing now? I know Harry's in the middle of practicing, but I'd rather see the Muggle thing before we get too cold."

"That's a good idea," Sirius agreed. "If you're okay with it, Harry?"

Harry certainly was.

* * *

"All right, so here's the things I got in London yesterday," Sirius said, shifting them out of the box. "I made sure to get things that used batteries – that's the right word, right?"

"Exactly," Hermione agreed, writing down each thing neatly on her new pad of paper. Harry had got her a special enchanted one from a curiosity shop in Diagon Alley which never ran out of new sheets, and seeing her using it made him feel distinctly proud of his guess. "So, that's a torch… a radio… and is that a television?"

Sirius proudly put that last one on top of the kitchen table. "I didn't know they did these with batteries. And I got Ted Tonks to make sure it was all charged up first."

Harry's wings shifted a little as he watched, every bit as interested as the others to see what would happen.

"Who's going to do the honours?" Sirius added. "What about you, Dean?"

Dean pressed the power button, and there was a _click_ noise. Something whirred, and then loud sounds came out of the speakers.

Someone was going on about how someone called Mandy had broken up with someone called Aidan, and that he'd gone back to Ireland which was why it was over between them.

"…there's no picture," Ron said. "Are you sure that's not the radio?"

"No, there's definitely a screen," Dean replied. "This is EastEnders, anyway, and that's not a radio program. It's still _working_, it's just that the screen isn't."

Hermione wrote that down.

"That's weird," Sirius summarized. "I was really expecting it not to work. But didn't the screen on your Game Boy thingy work, Harry?"

Harry confirmed that it did.

Dean turned the TV off again, and Ron huffed. "I was listening to that."

"Mate, I've tried to understand what's going on on Mum's soaps," Dean replied. "I don't think _she_ knows what's going on."

Hermione giggled.

The next thing they tried was the torch, which just worked without any fuss. It lit up, and stayed lit up, and Ron poked it experimentally.

"So this is what Muggles use instead of a Lumos spell?" he asked, and flicked the switch on and off a few times. "I can see how it's actually kind of better than a wand at lighting things up, it's just that it doesn't do the other things."

"Yeah, wands are much more useful overall," Dean agreed. "But if I was going somewhere dark and I knew it, I'd take a wand _and_ a torch so I could use my wand for other stuff."

"I'd set myself on fire," Harry volunteered, having been thinking about it. "You could set _yourself_ on fire, too."

"Yeah, or there's that," Dean admitted.

Neville took a turn with the torch, flicking it on and looking into it.

"That's really bright," he said, wincing. "It's like the bright bit gets bigger when you look into it."

"That's the mirror," Hermione told him. "All the light that's going back towards the torch is sort of useless, so the mirror just reflects it out forwards instead. So it lights up a whole room a bit, but the place you're pointing the torch is lit up a lot."

Neville nodded, sliding the switch to turn the torch off again, and then Harry tried the radio.

Surprisingly, that worked without any fuss either, and classical music filled the air.

"Well, now I'm really confused," Sirius summarized, as Ron twiddled the dials and found no sign of any Wizarding Wireless shows. "Why is all this Muggle stuff working? Are we too far from Hogwarts or something?"

"We could try some of it out in Gryffindor Tower," Harry suggested. "But let's try and get that fire whip spell working first."

Sirius didn't have any problem with that idea.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Harry's not experienced a proper Family Christmas before, which means he's not experienced Family Tensions before!

And yes, I'm enough of a perfectionist that I actually _looked up_ the EastEnders plotline for this period.


	44. Sun, Rune and Stars

Now that they'd already done a term on them, the optional classes started to get a bit more involved in the same way that the core classes had done two years ago.

It was a bit tiring, but it was also really interesting, and on the whole Harry felt very satisfied with his choices of subjects. Divination sounded like it was kind of repetitive, because it was always about how half the class was doomed, though Harry was a _bit_ interested when it turned out that one of the predictions the teacher had made in her first classes had come true – something upsetting had happened to Lavender Brown's pet rabbit over the Christmas Holidays.

Hermione thought that the original prediction had been so vague that Professor Trelawney didn't really win any points for it, because – as she pointed out – if you were expecting it then _any_ day could have _something_ upsetting in it. Harry could sort of agree with that, because in the Darine Codex and the Mrin Codex and so on things were much more specific.

The prophecy which had him in it was pretty specific, as well, though. So maybe that meant it was more likely to be true?

Harry wasn't sure. He wasn't a student of Divination, after all.

Muggle Studies was the other subject that Harry wasn't doing, but he was sort of doing some of it anyway because he and Dean were helping Ron and Neville keep up with the things that they didn't fully understand straight off. It was especially fun to hear about how Ron had taken the battery powered radio into the class and demonstrated it, which had apparently made Professor Burbage scratch her head a lot about how that could possibly be happening.

* * *

"All right, class," Professor Babbling said, in the second Runes lesson of the new term. "Today we're going to be looking into runic interactions, and why it's so fiddly to get runes just right."

She chalked a sentence on the board in English – _I cut grass_ – and then the same sentence again in Norse, using the Runic alphabet.

"Because this is a doing statement, it's the sort of thing that you might find on a runic object," she explained. "But who can see the problem with this?"

Hermione's hand went up first, and Professor Babbling called on her.

"It's because all the runic letters have a meaning as well, Professor," she said. "So they're affecting one another. In the word Gras, the Gifu rune means partnership, and the Raido rune means journey, so it has that affect as well."

"Very good," Professor Babbling nodded. "This is one of the reasons why using runes to create a complicated magical effect is so involved. Before you even begin carving the runes, you need to work out all the possible interpretations of what you're doing."

She chalked the Hagalaz rune onto the board, separate from the others.

"This rune is often found on weapons," she explained. "This is because it has the effect of making a weapon better by itself – it makes the material stronger and lets it stay sharper, for example. The effect you get from a single rune is at least consistent and doesn't involve this much working out."

Harry wrote that down.

"Let's go back to the words that we started with," the Runes professor went on. "First we have Ek, which is the person who is doing the action. That's Ehwaz and Kenaz. What do those mean?"

This time she called on Ernie, who answered that Ehwaz was the symbol for horse or friendship and that Kenaz was for character or personality.

"Good," Professor Babbling said, then took out another piece of chalk and drew a line underneath each rune. The one under Ehwaz came out brown, and the one under Kenaz came out red. "The other thing is that these runes consist of one Earth rune and one Fire rune. They're a rotational pair."

Half the class groaned, because elementally positioned runes were a whole other conversation which was even more complicated. It wasn't always the _same_ rule in every case, either…

Ron put up his hand, and when he was called on he asked whether that was why a lot of the Runic objects they'd seen so far had a sort of disjointed collection of letters.

"Indeed!" Professor Babbling agreed, sounding much pleased. "And this is one of the tricks used to make a less complex runic effect, which is to avoid grouping the runes together into words which might modify them further. Just these two letters here inscribed together would – if both used for a Runic effect – give good luck to close friends, because the friendship is moving upwards into an expression of personality."

She smiled pleasantly. "Now, let's move on to the next word, hoggva. This one's got six runes, so it's even more complicated. What do you think the first two will do?"

Harry tried, and said that the Hagalaz rune was about hail and about war, and was an Ice rune, while the Othila rune was about property and the homeland, and was an Earth rune.

Professor Babbling nodded, and Harry frowned. "But… if this is meant to be used to cut grass, then that combination is going to make it harder to cut, isn't it? Because the Othila rune is about making connections stronger, not making them weaker."

"That's one effect it has," Professor Babbling told him. "But that's inverted by the next rune, Gifu, because it's following an Earth rune with an Air rune. I'm afraid it was a trick question, Mr. Potter. But I hope it gives you some idea of just how hard it can be to work out how these runic systems work!"

Harry nodded, and tried another suggestion. "Would the Ice and the Earth natures mean that you're going from something hard to something associated with growing things?"

"And with winter becoming spring," Professor Babbling confirmed. "Yes, that has an effect as well..."

By the end of the lesson Harry's head was spinning a bit. It was all very interesting, though, and made more interesting by their homework.

They had to write a simple sentence in English, then in Runic Norse, and then write two feet of parchment on how the runes interacted with one another. Professor Babbling told them specifically that they were not to do something _so_ simple that they'd run out of things to say in two feet, but if they reached the end of two feet before running out of things to say that was fine and they could stop there.

* * *

With how cold it still was outside, Professor Kettleburn's focus for their lessons over January was specifically on the _care_ of magical creatures – on looking into how a wizard could ensure that the magical creatures he was looking after would stay healthy even in bad weather.

For some of them, that wasn't actually very difficult. Augureys actually preferred rain – it was the only time they went flying around – though they had trouble with snow, while the Jobberknoll had to be looked after more carefully because they didn't cry out when they were in distress or otherwise uncomfortable. That meant checking on them at least once a day and heating up their homes with a Warming Charm if they looked cold, or making sure they weren't damp from rain leaking in.

More surprising was when the subject of study was a highly amused June. As Professor Kettleburn pointed out, the class was care of magical _Creatures_ and not _B__easts_, so June gave everyone a pleasant talk on how it was different in winter as opposed to summer for the Wargs of the Forbidden Forest.

It was something Harry had already heard, but it was new to most of the class, and he could see how people like Lavender or even Draco were really _thinking_ – perhaps for the first time – about the idea of having trouble finding food.

"It's been better the last year or so," June added, bobbing her head. "If we're in serious trouble then I could go into town to ask for help. Some of the others are learning English as well to do the same thing, but we're not exactly rich."

"Ah, of course," Professor Kettleburn said. "So perhaps we could say that the way to take care of these particular magical creatures is just to be good neighbours? And to invite them around to dinner if they're hungry."

"More or less," June agreed. "I'm looking forward to being able to multiply food, too."

"What about taking care of your fur?" the professor went on. "Is there anything special there?"

"Well, there _is_, but we do it," June told him. "I suppose if you had a single Warg who didn't have any other nearby Wargs to visit, they might appreciate some help."

She paused, and her tongue lolled out for a moment. "Though I've been trying not to get too used to hot showers and shampoo."

* * *

"So answer me this," Daphne said, as they were carefully measuring out some porcupine quills during a Potions lesson.

Harry made an encouraging noise, not wanting to point out that Daphne hadn't actually _asked_ the question in the first place, and Daphne went on. "What exactly is in all those Muggle books you keep reading? Everyone's seen you reading them at meals."

"Oh, well, all sorts of things really," Harry replied.

He stopped for a bit as they split the quills into four unequal portions – in portions of one, one, two and four so they could double the dose of quills three times throughout the brewing process – then started crushing eggshells. That was a long task, so he had the time to talk.

"It's usually fantasy books," he told her. "Which is… well, Muggles don't know the truth about magic, so they have to guess, and the ideas they come up with can be fun. And they often make it be set in another world completely instead of just somewhere on this world."

"I don't really see the appeal," Daphne admitted. "What's the one you're reading at the moment?"

"It's actually the fifth book in a series called the Wheel of Time," Harry told her. "It's kind of… based on the idea that there's two kinds of magic, one for men and one for women. And the main character's sort of… the only person who can sort things out so the kind of magic for men doesn't drive everyone mad, and beat the Dark One."

"...so he's basically you?" Daphne asked, with an expression that looked like a smirk was asking for permission to deploy. "I can see why you'd like that."

"Well, he's not a dragon," Harry replied. "It's actually kind of odd, because he's _called_ a dragon but he's not a dragon. Or he's not a dragon _yet_."

He put more eggshells into the pestle, and kept grinding. "I don't really know how it's going to end, but I'm interested to see where it goes. Maybe he will turn into a dragon at some point."

"Is that part of why you started reading them?" Daphne said.

"You have to remember that I grew up with a Muggle family," Harry replied. "And really the only books I could read in the first place were Muggle books – and it's the fantasy books which tend to have dragons on the cover."

He stopped for a moment, thinking. "I know Muggles also do books about what if technology did things differently, though, so you could sort of think of it like that."

They were done with the eggshells, though, so next was a much more fiddly bit which involved plucking the petals and seeds from a sunflower. That was hard enough they both had to concentrate instead of being able to talk, and the conversation sort of faded away from there.

* * *

At the end of one of his Arithmancy classes, Harry packed up his things like everyone else – they'd been doing cartesian coordinates, so there was a lot of graph paper to pack up – but stayed behind as everyone else filed out of the room.

"Mr. Potter?" Professor Vector asked, seeing him still there. "Is something wrong?"

"I wanted to ask if something was okay, Professor," he explained. "I asked in a shop in Fort William whether they had any calculators for secondary school students, and I got this one."

It wasn't a very expensive one – there'd been some really complicated looking ones available – but importantly it had a solar panel. Harry wasn't sure how easy it would be to keep up a supply of batteries for lots of students (he'd already had to get some new ones for his Game Boy, and he didn't play the Link game all that much) but the solar one seemed like a good choice because it would keep recharging the calculator all the time.

"Well, well," Professor Vector said, as Harry demonstrated – turning it on, then doing a couple of simple calculations, and pointing out how the shell on it showed some more complicated modes you could do with it. "I've never had a chance to use one of these. What was it you were wondering?"

"I'm surprised you're not _more_ surprised, Professor," Harry admitted.

"I've heard from Professor Burbage about what you and your friends have been doing," the Arithmancy teacher explained.

That made sense, and Harry nodded his understanding before starting to explain. He was wondering if it'd be allowed to use the calculator for doing homework, or at least to check his homework to make sure he'd got something right, and whether that would be unfair.

"Hmm," Professor Vector said. "I can't see a reason you wouldn't be _allowed_, Mr. Potter, but it might not be a very good _idea_ because you might get too used to it. It'd be a bad idea to get used to having it, because I'm sure it won't be allowed on any of your exams!"

That was a good point, and Harry said so.

"My pleasure, Mr. Potter," she said. "And well done to you for asking."

* * *

Harry thought it was sort of a pity that he couldn't ask anyone who was in Muggle secondary school about how they handled things like calculators, because it was something he was interested in now – it wasn't like calculators were banned in the places where maths was done, was it? He did get the idea that maybe you were supposed to learn how to do things without _relying_ on the calculator, like how you were supposed to learn how to cast spells without relying on a spellbook, but you didn't have to learn how to do spells without a wand.

At least until NEWT year.

Then he remembered that Dean's sisters were all Muggles, and though the oldest – Emily – was only in Year Six at the moment she would be going to a Muggle secondary school next year. So he'd find out eventually.

That was just sort of a side thought, though, and the calculator was only really relevant to Arithmancy and perhaps the Muggle Studies his friends were doing. It didn't help with Charms, or Transfiguration, and it would have to be a very unusual situation for a calculator to help with Care of Magical Creatures.

"Oh, yeah," Ron said, when Harry voiced that thought. "Maybe if you had to stun a Flobberworm?"

"Why would you want to stun a Flobberworm?" Dean asked. "Have you seen those things? They just… kind of flobber at you."

He shrugged. "They're easy to take care of, though, so there's that."

"I don't think you _can_ stun a Flobberworm," Hermione said, thinking about it, and pulled out her unabridged _Fantastic Beasts_. "I'm not sure they have enough of a mind to notice."

"That would be an unusual experiment," Neville voiced. "Which one's translation, again?"

"You mean Xenographia?" Harry replied, then saw Neville was doing Arithmancy. "Oh, I think that's… moving things from one place to another."

"Okay, so if I translate this down by three and right by two..." Neville mused, and started scribbling on some scrap parchment. "All the coordinates move by the same amount?"

"That's right," Hermione agreed absently. "Everything moves by the same amount in translation… and yes, it looks like you can't stun a Flobberworm. Or if you can, there's no difference anyone can notice."

"So that's for a very different reason to why you can't stun a dragon," Ron sniggered, then looked at his homework. "I think I've done the Runes stuff… Nev, do you mind if I get started on the Muggle Studies?"

"Go ahead," Neville replied. "I've got some Enlargement to do."

"Seems funny to be doing that with numbers, when you could just have a spell do it," Ron said idly.

"I actually think that might be why," Harry frowned. "The spell probably uses that maths, or something."

He shrugged his wings. "We've not got to that bit yet."

"What I want to see is when we get to making things in Runes," Ron replied. "Though, yeah, making spells in Arithmancy sounds fun too."

"I was wondering about that," Neville said, putting his quill down so it didn't dribble on the parchment. "About making things in Runes, and about how complicated you said it was."

"Don't remind me," Ron groaned. "At least with spells you can come up with them through guesswork. If you put random runes on something I don't know what would happen."

"I was wondering if you could actually make Sting," Neville explained.

"My mum listens to him," Dean interjected.

"...what?" Neville asked, completely thrown.

"I'll show you later, don't worry," Dean told him. "Wonder if I can get a Walkman for my birthday this year?"

"You mean the sword, Sting?" Hermione checked. "That's an interesting one. I can't remember if the words on it were added later or not. You know, Sting is my name, I am the spider's bane."

"Spider's bane?" Ron repeated. "Now I'm interested."

"Is this going to be what gets you to read the Lord of the Rings at last?" Harry said, ears perking up a little. "Everyone else has."

"Yeah, all right, maybe," Ron allowed. "What does this Sting sword do?"

"Well, it lights up when orcs are nearby," Harry began to count off. "And it's quite small, more of a dagger really, but Bilbo's quite small as well so he uses it like a sword. But it's good at cutting through spiders and spider webs and stuff, which is why Bilbo named it Sting – it was stinging the spiders, and they weren't used to it."

"The words must have come later, then," Hermione said, nodding. "Otherwise it'd be odd for him to call it Sting when it already said that it was called Sting."

"Doesn't it hurt Shelob, later on?" Neville checked, and Harry nodded.

Ron blinked. "Who's Shelob?"

"You'll see," Harry told him, not really wanting to put Ron off reading the books entirely.

Dean started doodling on some of the scrap parchment lying on the table. "Could you actually do that, with runes? Make a sword that was good against spiders?"

Hermione frowned, thinking about it. She began to say something, then stopped and thought harder.

"Maybe?" she said, eventually. "You'd have to be able to inscribe 'spider', and we haven't got to that sort of thing yet. I don't even know if you could do the same thing by writing 'insect'."

"Spiders aren't insects, though," Dean said. "I know that much, but maybe magic doesn't?"

He held up the parchment, which now had a little sketch of a sword on it. It wasn't straight-edged like the classical image of a sword, but had a little kind of leaf-shaped curl to it.

"Nice," Ron summarized.

"How did we go from homework to that?" Hermione asked, shaking her head with a huff. "And why do we keep doing it?"

"It's fun?" Harry suggested. "And we do finish on time anyway."

"I think that's one of the school rules, now," Ron suggested. "Hermione made sure it was."

"How could I possibly change the school rules, Ron?" Hermione asked. "Honestly."

"I wouldn't put it past you," Neville shrugged.

Dean hummed. "Perhaps we should do Charms? That's one we all have, so we're more likely to stay on topic."

"Good idea," Harry agreed. "There was that essay about the body bind, wasn't there?"

He tilted his head. "I wonder how that would work on my wings, if it worked at all."

* * *

The weather was still in a distinctly unsettled state, with snow and sleet and howling wind alternating with lulls often full of thick mist, but that was more or less what Scottish weather was like in Harry's experience by now.

Importantly, it didn't affect the Astronomy Tower. That was kind of fortunate, because the winter was the best time for Astronomy in Scotland (though some of Harry's classmates grumbled a bit about how that meant they had to stand on a high tower in cold weather, with the result that Professor Sinistra usually spent the first five to ten minutes of class handing out Warming Charms).

In this case, they were doing a study of nebulas, because it was only in the middle of winter that you could see the constellation Orion nice and clearly and that had the best nebula.

"A nebula is a cloud of gas, in space," Professor Sinistra explained, as they all pointed their telescopes at it. "Why might it be visible to us?"

Ron was one of the first to put his hands up, and said that it was because it was lit up by all the stars inside it.

"Very good, Mr. Weasley," the Astronomy teacher told him. "Yes, because the Orion Nebula is a star forming nebula. That means there's a lot of energy inside it, and the stars energize the gas – that means the whole of the cloud glows, but the stars are _why_ it glows."

Harry wondered if she was going to mention the thing about street lamps he'd read in a Muggle book on the subject, but she just moved on. "Can anyone think of the other possibilities?"

This time it was Su Li who was called on, and she suggested that maybe you could have a nebula which wasn't forming stars but which was _near_ stars.

"Correct, Miss Li," Professor Sinistra agreed. "That is called a _reflection_ nebula, because we can see it from the light reflecting off it. They're usually not as bright in colour, because the gas inside the nebula is not glowing by itself. Please turn your telescopes to the star Rigel – still in Orion – and then down and to the left a little… there should be a faint blue smear."

Harry could see it okay, but it sounded like most of the class had trouble.

"That's all right, a reflection nebula can be quite dim," Professor Sinistra assured them. "Muggles call this one the Witch Head nebula, but I'm not at all sure why. Now, before we look at a brighter nebula, what is the third possibility?"

It happened to be Draco Malfoy who answered. "One that doesn't get lit up at all. We can only see it because it blocks something."

"Correct," Professor Sinistra agreed.

She went on to give an example, before directing them to look at some other nebulae, and Harry wondered how much Draco had learned astronomy because his name was astronomical.

Or maybe he just found it interesting. Harry certainly did, especially when Professor Sinistra told them that one of the nebulas they'd been looking at was a hundred times further away than the others and that if it were only a thousand light years away it'd cast visible shadows.

Though she did say that if it were only a thousand light years away they'd have been about that close to a supernova, which sounded both interesting and mildly unhealthy (or at least startling).

* * *

As January turned into February, it was time for the second Gryffindor Quidditch match of the season – this time against the Ravenclaw team.

There was some light misty drizzle coming down as they headed out to the stands, so Harry provided his wings as umbrellas, but by the time they actually got there Hermione was annoyed enough that she cast the _Impervius_ spell on her clothes and hat.

That went down well enough that she was asked to demonstrate it for some of the other third- and fourth-year Gryffindors (it didn't have any special wand movements, but the pronunciation had the stress on the second syllable) though Harry didn't need to learn it because he'd already done so to keep his books safe in the rain.

By the time the team was actually heading out to the pitch, everyone in that part of the stands was mostly set up so they wouldn't get nearly as damp as they otherwise should – and everyone had cast it on _themselves_, which was something Harry could see Neville being quietly proud of.

It made him smile, and the good feeling stayed fizzing away as he watched the game begin.

Ron was still reserve Keeper rather than the actual official Keeper, but Fred, George and Ginny were in the team, so it was almost half Weasley and next year it'd almost certainly be _more_ than half Weasley. That made supporting it feel a little strange, if anything.

If the rain was heavier it would have made it a bit hard to see how the game was going, but instead it just made it so that everyone was a bit damp and annoyed and that anyone flying quickly would end up soaking wet. That actually did seem to affect how everyone played, with things being a bit slower moving than normal and with quite a lot of flying at a sort of sideways angle.

Despite that, or maybe even because of that, the game was full of good tactical play and formations were more important than speed. Both Ginny and Cho were constantly flying interference for their Chasers or even their Beaters as the scores slowly went up, and it was two hours in when the Snitch was finally caught (by Ginny, who barely beat out Cho in a corkscrew dive).

Everyone cheered, which was nice.

* * *

"So here's what I don't really get about that," Dean said, about half an hour later when they were all back inside and celebrating. "Why do we even _have_ Quidditch games when it's raining?"

"Don't Muggle sports happen on rainy days?" Neville asked.

"Well, yeah, but there's a lot more Muggle sports games," Dean replied, shrugging. "And they have to be scheduled and stuff so they can go out on the radio or TV or stuff."

He nodded towards Harry. "Thanks for letting me listen to that most recent Irons game, by the way."

"That's okay," Harry replied, because it only really seemed natural to let a friend listen to the radio Sirius had got if his friend wanted to listen to it.

"But anyway, my point is," Dean resumed, "West Ham plays forty-two games over the course of the season, and some of the year is the off season. So they have to squeeze in about two games a week just to make it work. But the Gryffindor Quidditch team plays three games _a year_ – and the pitch is only used for a game six times. So why not just go on a day with good weather?"

"I reckon I know why," Ron contributed. "It's because games can last for days, remember? Any professional Quidditch player might need to play through crap weather because it _turns_ crap over the course of the game, so there's no point waiting for a perfect day."

Dean thought visibly about that.

"Good point," he admitted. "I hadn't thought of that."

"It's really different from cricket," Harry added, this time for the benefit of Ron and Neville. "With that one, they stop playing if it starts raining and they start again only when it stops and the light's good."

"Blimey, can you imagine?" Ron boggled. "Some places it rains so much a Quidditch match might last all year!"

"Some cricket games last five days even in good weather," Hermione said. "So it wouldn't exactly be completely out there."

* * *

On the first Sunday in February, Harry alighted atop a hill to the north of Fort William and checked his list.

Fred and George had found something out about Percy which meant they wanted some basic Muggle supplies, and after securing a promise that the prank they were planning wasn't at all malicious Harry had thought about it and decided that it wouldn't be a problem to oblige them on that one.

Then there were a couple of books to take back to the library, a couple of _other_ books to get out from the library – sequels to the ones he was taking back, in fact – and a new sketchbook for Dean. Harry himself needed a refill for his camera, and when it was all added up this was going to be quite a shopping trip. And that was before seeing if the bookshops had anything new.

Harry had to admit that he was still undecided what sort of place he wanted to live after he left school. Living somewhere with people who could actually see he was a dragon would be nice, but it would be hard to live without a big bookshop within easy range.

Maybe there was somewhere near London he could compromise.

Shrugging, he put the list away again and spread his wings. It took only a few steps forwards for him to enter the current of air blowing up the side of the hill, and his wings filled with a leathery _boom_ before tugging him upwards.

One more step forwards, and Harry's paws left the grass.

It wasn't the most efficient way to take off, but it was very pleasant and Harry liked to do it whenever he got the chance.

* * *

Supplies for Fred and George? Check. (Harry wasn't really _sure_ what they needed all those rose petals for, but check.)

Dean's sketchbook? Check. New books? Check.

Books returned to the library? Also check.

Harry had been all ready to go back to Hogwarts, but then he'd run into a book in the local second hand bookshop which had really caught his attention.

It was an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons book, which had originally been part of a boxed set by the looks of it, and it was about a way of joining together lots of the worlds from different D&D settings – Krynn, Faerun, all sorts of places.

And you got from one place to another by flying a magical ship that could go into space, and to another world, and then come down to land there.

It was a fascinating idea, and Harry ended up sitting there reading it for more than half an hour before he finally remembered that this was a bookshop and he could just buy the book to take back to Hogwarts.

"I wondered if you were going to read the whole thing, lad," the shopkeeper chuckled, as Harry handed it to him along with two other interesting books and the money to pay for them all. "Branching out a bit? I don't think I've seen you get a book like this before."

He rang them up, and pushed them back across the counter.

"I did get some for my birthday a while ago, but I hadn't seen one like this until now," Harry replied, taking the books and putting them in his backpack – which had been charmed impervious to rain a long time ago.

Which, now he looked outside, was a good thing because the weather looked like it was going to start tipping it down any minute now. The sky was black and gloomy, with clouds visibly moving, and there was a translucent sheet of rain already falling off in the distance.

"You'll want to hurry home, lad," the shopkeeper said, following his gaze. "You've got your raincoat?"

"No," Harry admitted, which was close enough.

"Extra quick, then," he was told. "Chop chop!"

Harry went bounding out the door, turning right and right again to get into a side street – just to make it less awkward – then jumped and took off with one powerful downbeat.

A gust of wind battered him sideways a little, but fortunately Fort William didn't have any tall buildings for him to hit.

* * *

Unfortunately for Harry, the truly bad weather had turned out to be north of the town – right where he was going.

Winds gusted and clawed at him, and rain was coming down in sheets – driven by the wind into slaps of water that made him wince and blink to clear his vision. He'd long since put his glasses in his bag, not wanting to lose them, but even without them getting spattered with rain he could still barely see anything.

He tried climbing into the clouds, rising as high as he could to see if he could break through into clear air, but it seemed like he had to go an awfully long way and if the clouds went _that_ high he probably wouldn't see anything anyway. So he went back down, circling (or trying to circle) so he wouldn't accidentally dive straight into the ground – which would be quite embarrassing.

It was about an hour after leaving Fort William that Harry finally got back down to the level where he could at least see some sign of the ground, and that sign was trees – first a tall, lightning-scarred fir, then more following the form of the land, and finally Harry slipped between the branches of two of the trees to come to a soggy halt in some bushes.

Shaking twigs out of his sodden robes and twisting his wings a little so they formed an umbrella over his head, Harry wondered what he was going to do now.

He'd been completely turned around by the storm even _before_ trying to climb into clear air, and if he tried to guess where Hogwarts was now he'd probably end up over the sea or something. That compass Ron had got him might have helped if he'd remembered to bring it, but… well, it was off in Hogwarts.

Harry wasn't sure if he was close enough to Hogwarts that magic spells would be allowed, but even if he was then he didn't actually know any spells that would help. If he knew how to cast the Patronus and make it carry messages it would let him let everyone know he was safe, but that wasn't going to work because he didn't know that.

It was a bit of a mess, really.

Still, at least he hadn't knocked over a tree or something.

* * *

AN:

* * *

I've been asked to space these out slightly so that it's easier to tell which one's the most recent; accordingly, the next chapter of this pair is to be posted tomorrow.

Also, oh dear.

Hope the runic stuff seems interesting.


	45. Dragons Still Get Lost

An hour or so later, the rain had largely died down. It was still quite cloudy, though, the clouds seeming almost low enough to turn into fog, and worse was that the sun had set and so everything was now quite dark – even darker than when the clouds had been thick with rain.

Harry wasn't nearly confident enough in his navigation to be able to find his way to Hogwarts at night, in low cloud, and especially when he didn't know where he was starting in the first place. He could have flown past Hogwarts so he'd need to fly back south, or maybe he'd ended up to the east of the castle – or even not have made it all the way, so he'd still have to go further north.

It was all quite a puzzle.

Harry was sure his friends would be worried, as well, but it might take a while for someone to remember that they could send Hedwig with a letter and find him that way.

Still, the young dragon thought, it could easily be worse.

He picked up a pine branch, sniffed it, then ate most of the smaller branches leading off it. That left him with a short length of wood, and after considering for a moment longer he cast a Bluebell Flames spell and breathed over the end of the pine branch.

The result looked quite good, and it would be easier to explain if he happened to end up in a Muggle area than using a magic wand for light. It wouldn't be perfect, because most flames weren't blue, but he could just say it was something to do with pine resin.

That still left Harry wondering which way to go, and whether he should take off at all, and after a bit of thought he decided he should make a little pattern of lights on the ground with a second torch and come back to it. It felt a bit like the kind of problem-solving that Neville and the others did in their dungeons and dragons game, though Harry had to admit he'd much rather be doing this kind of working out in a dungeon back at Hogwarts instead of lost somewhere in an unknown part of Scotland.

* * *

Harry was in the middle of trying to find a good place to take off – somewhere where he could have a good landing path and aim for it in the dark – when there was a cough behind him.

"Oh, um, hello," Harry said, turning. "Do you have any..."

He was about to continue by asking if the person had any idea where he was, but the sight of the person who'd spoken was enough of a surprise that he had to blink.

"Any what?" asked the centaur, a man to the waist and a horse below it – with a red beard and red hair and a chestnut lower body, and a belt a little above his waist which had some pouches hanging from it.

"Sorry," Harry said. "I've never met a centaur before, it was a bit of a surprise."

"You must be Harry Potter," the centaur declared. "I have never met a talking dragon before, but Rubeus Hagrid has told me of you."

"You know Hagrid?" Harry asked. "That's great – that must mean you know where Hogwarts castle is!"

"Indeed I do," the centaur told him. "And I also know that the name your headmaster gives this forest is the _forbidden_ forest."

"I was on my way back to the castle and I got blown off course," Harry explained, then remembered he'd been very rude. "Oh – what's your name?"

The centaur bowed. "I am Ronan."

He looked upwards, then returned his attention to Harry. There was a long silence, and Harry felt a sudden urge to cough.

"Mercury is bright, tonight," Ronan said, eventually. "But Mars is shadowed."

Harry looked up as well, and saw nothing – the clouds were still thick and grey.

"Ah..." he began, not wanting to be even more rude than he'd already been, and Ronan chuckled.

It sounded a little bit like a whicker, or a neigh, or one of those horse noises, but maybe that was just because part of Harry was expecting that sort of thing.

"The planets and the stars do not change greatly from one day to the next, Harry Potter," he explained. "I looked last night."

"What does it mean, then?" Harry asked. "If Mercury is bright and Mars isn't, I mean."

"Mars is the bringer of strife, and Mercury of change," Ronan told him. "But wise Saturn also rests in the sky, below Mercury."

"So certain types of things happen on certain days?" Harry tried.

"What do they teach you at that school of yours?" Ronan asked, sounding amused.

"Well, quite a lot about Astronomy," Harry said. "But we're told that the planets are all really predictable, so you can know how they're going to look years in advance. And if there's anything about telling the future, it would be in Divination and I don't do that subject."

There was another long silence, and Harry shifted his wing so his bag wouldn't keep getting wet.

"A strange choice, to not do Divination, for someone such as you," Ronan said, eventually. "But it is good to hear that astronomy is taught."

He beckoned. "Come. Your castle is this way."

The man – or stallion? Harry wasn't sure of the words here either – waited until Harry had gathered his things and started moving, then slowly sped up. He reached a fast trot by the time Harry was having a bit of trouble keeping up, and backed off a little – leading him along a path through the trees and undergrowth, here going up a small hill and there down one, and then passing around the sodden edges of a marshy area.

"Actually, is there a reason why I haven't seen a centaur at Hogwarts?" Harry asked.

Ronan stopped, so suddenly that Harry nearly ran into the back of him, and turned to give Harry a long and considering look.

"What." he said.

It was a question, even if he hadn't said it like one, and Harry hurried to answer it. "Well, there's a sphinx, and two kitsune, and a selkie, and one of the wolf pack from the forest, and a three-headed dog. So I think a centaur would fit in pretty well."

Ronan stared for several more seconds, then shook his head and resumed trotting.

Harry was glad to have cleared that up.

* * *

The forest was very confusing in the dark, even when accompanied by a centaur who'd lived there (presumably) all his life. Harry did his best, but he really couldn't tell why one path was better than another, or why they went around a hill rather than climbing to the top of it.

On the other paw – or the other hoof, since this was a centaur – maybe it was like how it was easy to get lost in Hogwarts until you'd lived there for long enough to have an idea of which floor you were on. So Ronan knew where they were compared to the rest of the forest, and he knew to head… whichever direction this was… to get to Hogwarts.

"Does it matter for how the stars work to tell the future that they're a really long way away?" Harry asked, as they passed through a thick patch. "Some of them are so far away it takes centuries for their light to get here."

"We read the stars to tell the future, writ large in the loom of the sky," Ronan answered. "Why would it matter to a star if it were to tell three years or three hundred?"

Harry hadn't thought about it that way before, and he supposed it did make sense. It sounded like an awful lot of work for the universe to go to just to predict things on this one planet, though.

Unless that was the wrong way to think about it.

"And do they tell the future for everywhere in the world?" he went on.

"Perhaps you _should_ have studied Divination," Ronan observed, sounding somewhat amused.

There was a splatter of hooves, and another centaur came hurrying up. This one was younger, with incredibly pale hair and a palomino body.

"Ronan," the newcomer said, with a sigh of relief, and slacked off the tension on a startlingly large longbow he'd been carrying. "It is good to see you are safe."

"You need not fear for my safety, Firenze," Ronan informed him, and the new centaur – Firenze – fell in alongside him. "I know well to avoid the dangerous parts of the forest."

"These days all the forest seems dangerous," Firenze replied, inclining his head a little.

"I didn't know centaurs used longbows," Harry volunteered. "Isn't it a bit awkward?"

Then he waved. "Oh, I'm Harry Potter, by the way."

"A great pleasure, Harry Potter," Firenze told him, trotting to the side a little and giving Harry a slight bow.

He held up one hoof, using the frog as a support for one end of his longbow, and bent it a little with one arm. The other removed the bowstring, and he coiled it up before stowing it in a pouch on his belt.

"And we manage," he added, now carrying the main part of the bow alongside his body. "We may appear as though we are a mere merger of human and horse, but our nature is not so simple."

Ronan snorted. "You had best hope Bane does not hear you, Firenze."

"Does he think us so simple?" Firenze challenged, but he sounded amused more than anything.

"Perhaps it would be better if Bane heard none of the events of tonight," Ronan mused. "I do not wish to imagine what he would do with the suggestion that a centaur attend the human school."

Harry felt like sighing. It seemed as though everyone had their own version of Disgusted of Uxbridge.

* * *

It was perhaps another twenty minutes later that they finally came out of the edge of the forest, and Harry smiled in relief at the familiar sight of Hogwarts looming overhead.

"Thank you both," he said, turning to Ronan and Firenze. "You've saved me from either a night in the forest or quite a lot of crashing into trees."

"Then it is a good thing we helped you," Firenze observed. "There are only so many trees in the forest."

"Take care not to be lost again," Ronan added. "You may not get so lucky. The forest is a dangerous place."

Harry said he'd do his best, waited a moment to see if there was anything else to say, then took off and flew to the front door.

* * *

As he'd sort of expected, it wasn't as simple as just coming in the door and going up to Gryffindor Tower. He'd been out past curfew, after all, and his friends had all been worried about him – indeed, Hagrid had gone out to look for him, and Harry's route back to the castle had missed him entirely.

Professor McGonagall had been worried and angry at the same time, and she'd told him off for staying out so late. Harry had to admit that he _had_ stayed out late, but (as he tried to explain) he hadn't exactly planned to be hit by a storm, so it wasn't _entirely_ his fault.

Somewhat to his surprise (and much to the surprise of Fred and George) their head of house didn't actually give him a detention, since she did agree that it hadn't been something he'd been trying to do. He was however told to pay much more attention to the weather when he went flying out to a Muggle town, and that he'd have to write an essay on ways to get word to Hogwarts and/or get back to Hogwarts if a similar situation happened again – _before_ the next time he went out there.

That was kind of annoying, because it seemed a bit like a punishment, and Professor McGonagall _had_ agreed that it had been largely the storm's fault. But he thought about it a bit, and realized that it was also making sure he actually had a collection of ways to solve the problem if it happened again.

Hagrid got back a few minutes later, along with a distraught Nora (who'd been helping to look), and Harry had to go outside to get everything sorted out.

Nora sniffed him carefully, looking him up and down, then declared that he was "Harry!" and gave him a hug.

"Thanks for coming to look for me," Harry told her, with some difficulty because Nora's hug was particularly enthusiastic today.

"I helped?" Nora asked.

"You helped," Hagrid told her, a bit gruffly. "Good work."

Then Hedwig turned up with a letter for him, then Padfoot came bounding up, and after that Professor McGonagall asked everyone to _please_ let Mr. Potter go upstairs.

* * *

For some reason Harry didn't _quite_ understand, everyone went "wahey!" when Harry came in through the portrait hole.

It seemed like one of those things that school children everywhere learned by a sort of subtle magic, the same way that there were those games from playground in primary school that never turned up in books written by adults even though the games must have been around for generations.

Or maybe Harry was overthinking it.

Several of the Gryffindors asked him what had happened, and he had to explain how he'd been blown off course and got lost on the way back from Fort William. Then he mentioned how he'd met the centaurs, and apparently that was significant if the reactions of the magically-raised students was anything to go by.

It took almost five minutes for him to get through to join Ron, Neville, Hermione and Dean, and when he did reach their table (it was the one with the wider seat so Harry could sit on it with all four legs) the first thing that happened was that Ron said sorry.

"...wait," Dean said, giving Ron a wary glance. "I didn't know you could make thunderstorms, Ron."

"No, not that," Ron explained. "I didn't notice you were late back, and when I did notice I should have sent Hedwig with a letter for you earlier. I only just remembered a few minutes ago."

Harry shrugged his wings a bit. "I don't think anyone else thought of that either."

"But you told me about it, back when you first went to Fort William," Ron insisted. "And I feel like a prat for forgetting."

"I do have to write an essay about ways I could have solved the problem," Harry said. "That's just going to be one of them."

"Are you sure Professor McGonagall didn't get you mixed up with Hermione?" Neville asked. "That seems like the sort of thing she'd do to make sure Hermione didn't panic."

Hermione grumbled something about stereotyping.

"I got your sketchbook, Dean," Harry said suddenly, remembering what he'd been shopping for in the first place, and got it out of his bag. His glasses came next, going back onto his muzzle where they usually were, and then he got the Spelljammer book out and put it on the table.

"Huh," Neville said, looking at it. "Ron, is that what space ships normally look like?"

"No, they're more like big planes or rockets if they have to be down in the air, or spiky things with panels if they don't," Ron answered. "What _is_ that?"

"It's a book I found in a second hand bookshop," Harry explained. "I lost track of time reading it, and the storm showed up while I wasn't paying attention. The ships are kind of… what Dungeons and Dragons worlds do for flying into space."

"Isn't that a bit like that thing you said there was in the Lord of the Rings?" Ron said. "Where if a human sails west, they just go around the world, but if an elf sails west they sort of keep going into the sky?"

"I never really got that," Neville admitted. "What if there's a human and an elf on the same ship?"

"It depends if they're a Ring Bearer, I think," Hermione replied. "Were there any human Ring Bearers? I don't think so."

"I'm more wondering if you could make one of these," Ron said, tapping the cover. "It's kind of silly looking, though. Are there any other ones?"

Harry demonstrated, opening the book and leafing through to a picture of a more conventional-looking Spelljammer. This one was sort of like a normal wooden sailing ship, like the ones in _Swallows and Amazons_ but a bit bigger, and with a few changes.

"There are Bubble Head charms," Ron muttered to himself, looking at it. "And maybe you could do runes or something to make the wood not explode and stuff?"

"Runes would be tricky," Harry pointed out.

"I know," Ron agreed. "But it'd be cool."

"And how would you make sure _you_ didn't explode?" Neville asked.

"Space suit," Ron answered, with a shrug.

* * *

Everything felt very normal the next day, which was nice. People did talk about him getting lost a bit, but that felt more like the sort of thing that happened when something interesting happened rather than anything else, and the lessons went just the same as normal.

In Transfiguration it was one of those times when they studied a topic much more closely than they had in a previous year, but didn't actually start casting it yet. That was a little bit disappointing in a way, because Switching Spells were one of those things that sounded really useful for all sorts of things, but Professor McGonagall made sure to point out how dangerous the spell could be and that if they got it wrong it might be one of the hardest to reverse.

She mentioned one student who'd ended up with cat ears for three months until they'd finally managed to reverse it, which made everyone wince.

It seemed to Harry as though that was probably because of not concentrating properly, though. It was a bit like the Patronus spell, where focusing was so important, and if you thought of the wrong thing then the spell wouldn't work or would even go wrong.

That was just a guess, though.

* * *

"Hey, Potter," Draco said, walking over during lunch. "What was it like getting lost in the forest?"

"It was a bit annoying," Harry replied. "I couldn't pass the time by reading a book, because it was raining."

"You weren't scared?" Draco pressed.

Harry shook his head. "Not really. It was a bit dark, but I didn't really see anything scary. I don't know if there's anything really scary in there at all, come to think of it."

Draco wasn't the only one who looked confused at that, so Harry explained. "Well… the thing everyone usually says is in the Forbidden Forest is werewolves, but they really just mean Wargs like June. And we've met her family, they came to the Christmas feast in her first year."

"So you're saying you're _not_ scared of the Forbidden Forest?" Draco asked. "Think the school rules don't apply to you, now you didn't even get a detention for it?"

"I didn't _mean_ to go in there," Harry tried to explain. "I wasn't sure which way it was back to Hogwarts."

He had the feeling that Draco wasn't really listening, though.

After a few more minutes, Draco went back to his lunch, and Hermione gave Harry a quick, tight smile.

"Don't let him get to you," she said. "He's always trying to wind you up."

"He is?" Harry asked, thinking about that.

It did make a lot more sense now he thought of it that way.

The young dragon took a bite of his pie dish, then shrugged. "He's not very good at it."

* * *

In between school work, homework and club work, Harry spent quite a lot of the next week or so first planning out and researching his essay – and then writing it.

It was difficult, but not because it was _hard_ to do. Instead, it was just that there were so many ways of doing it, or possible ways of doing it, and Harry kept thinking of more that he had to jot down on note paper before researching.

(He couldn't go to Fort William to do research, obviously, but even so he could think of a few Muggle methods he was pretty sure would work.)

First there was the ones he'd already thought of, like the idea of carrying a mirror so he could call Sirius or someone at Hogwarts – which wouldn't actually get him _back_, but would let people know he was going to be late and that he was safe. That would also let him ask for one of the other methods to be started, which he noted down as well.

The radio was basically the same, and Harry explained as best he could how it seemed like radios would work even at Hogwarts. He'd have to be more careful with it, because it might lead to a Muggle overhearing something that would break the Statute of Secrecy. But Muggles never seemed to overhear the Wizarding Wireless, and _that_ meant Harry spent half an hour in the library trying to find out if you could carry a Wizarding two-way radio.

Sadly he had to just note that one down as a maybe.

Talking about a radio led to talking about a mobile phone, as well as a thing he'd heard about on the Muggle news called a _satellite_ phone (which worked by satellites, and so was able to work in places a mobile phone didn't work). He had to say that that probably wouldn't let him contact any actual wizards, unless he was able to telephone someone like Ted Tonks who had a phone number despite being a wizard, but he could _instead_ call the Muggle emergency services and ask them to help him… if he knew he wasn't in somewhere like the Forbidden Forest.

Not being able to check any of the books in Fort William library, Harry couldn't tell you if there was a Muggle way to tell where you were if you were stuck on a hillside in the middle of a storm, which meant that that was just another one of the ideas which he'd have to be careful with.

After a bit more thought, Harry added the message form of the Patronus, and said he was still learning how to do it. It wouldn't help him find where he was, but it would mean he'd be able to ask someone to send him an Owl.

That was what a lot of those methods really boiled down to.

With that out of the way, Harry started to get more creative. There was compass navigation, which just meant knowing the right bearing to fly to get to Hogwarts from Fort William (which wasn't guaranteed to work, but would be a good start and get him in the right idea), or there was one of those ideas which was so simple Harry wanted to kick himself for not thinking of it before – just finding and following the railway line leading to Hogsmeade. It went right near Fort William anyway, so it'd be somewhere easy to find, and he couldn't really get lost following it.

On that same topic, Harry added following the coastline north to somewhere near Hogwarts and then flying directly east from there, which was the same sort of thing again. Then he came up with flying north and west until he either ran into Skye or Kyle of Lochalsh, or north until he ran into the railway line from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh, and using that to locate Portree on Skye (and subsequently to ask one of the Pride of Portree for the use of their Floo).

When he finished writing that one down, it was quite late in the evening, but Harry didn't really want to go to bed until he'd stopped coming up with _new_ ideas. He'd dug the Marauder's Map out as a reminder that it existed, and was just writing about the possibility of a really _big_ version of Remus' Hogwarts Maps that showed the location of the map parchment itself and of something in Hogwarts – which he could use with a compass to find his way back – when he noticed something a bit odd.

There were always a few dots moving around, mostly prefects doing their rounds, but Harry knew who all the prefects were and was pretty good with a fairly big chunk of the rest of the school body. He couldn't remember anyone called βασίλισσα in the entire school, and it was the sort of name he thought he'd probably remember – and they were moving around not far from where Nora's bedroom was.

Writing down the Greek letters on another piece of scrap parchment, Harry watched what βασίλισσα was doing, and was more than a little confused when they vanished entirely.

"_Xerographia_," he declared, tapping the parchment, and looked at the two identical copies. Then, "_Xenographia_".

The one he'd tapped shimmered and changed, turning into a single English word, 'Empress'.

It was a little hard to tell _what_ to think about that.

* * *

AN:

* * *

And here's the other half of that pair.

I don't know if all of Harry's ideas would actually work, but it's interesting to think about them.


	46. No Longer A Ruthless Dragon

Harry wondered about the strange visitor for most of an hour until he finally decided that the thing which made most sense was that she (or, probably she) was one of the ghosts. Maybe even the Grey Lady, who never said anything and was rumoured to be about a thousand years old.

It was another one of the little puzzles in the back of his mind, and he wondered if maybe the Grey Lady never spoke because she only knew Dragonish. It wasn't something he could really test unless he got lucky, though, so Harry just wrote about the Knight Bus in his essay and called it a night.

Or a knight – which made him giggle when he thought of it.

* * *

The following Monday was Valentine's Day, and Harry got to see what Fred and George had wanted those petals for. Eventually.

Unlike Professor Lockhart, Professor Lupin (i.e. Moony) hadn't done anything special for Valentine's day, and nor had any of Harry's other teachers. It sounded from what Hermione said as though the Divination class had featured a few questions about romance, but she said none of it had been very helpful.

Just after dinner, though, Fred (or possibly George) had grabbed Harry and his friends and hurried them up four flights of stairs.

"Come on," he said. "You're going to want to see this."

"Are we?" Ron asked, as they reached the fifth flight, then grumbled something and switched to the shape he'd reluctantly accepted as being Nutkin. Harry scooped his friend up with a tail, giving him a lift, and a moment later Dean blurred into _his_ Animagus form.

"Well, yeah," Fred answered. "Probably. It'll be funny. Now, shush."

They reached one of the landings, and Harry saw that George was waiting.

"Did you say to shush?" George asked, softly.

"I said to shush," Fred agreed.

George (or perhaps _that_ was Fred) had his wand out and resting against his neck. The tip was pointing it at nothing in particular, and Harry was sure he could smell something like flowers.

"What's going on?" Hermione asked.

"I'm sure we were quite clear about you needing to shush," George replied. "Steady… and… now."

One of the classroom doors opened, and George spun around. His wand came off where it was resting on his neck and stayed pointing the same direction as he turned, and once he was done with the turn he flicked it.

The supply of rose petals that Harry had got for them in Fort William appeared directly above the door, hung for just a moment, then fluttered down in a disorganized avalanche on top of a startled Percy Weasley.

"Congratulations!" the twins called out.

"It took us a while to realize it," Fred went on.

"Who knew our perfect older brother could be so sneaky!" George agreed.

"But we know now, so you'd better invite her around to dinner next summer," Fred concluded.

"I – what?" Percy asked, covered in rose petals and baffled.

"You were discussing things with the Head Girl, weren't you?" George asked.

"I wasn't-" Percy began.

"Oh, then you _must_ have been snogging," Fred said wisely. "It's the right time of year for it."

"Really, we're being supportive," George added. "Hello, Penelope! Don't worry, we don't bite."

"If you do I'll get Mum to give you rabies shots," Percy muttered, shaking his head and brushing petals out of his hair. "It's going to take forever to get rid of these..."

* * *

It was sort of interesting to know that Penelope and Percy were dating, really, given that Harry had known them both for years now. In one way, it made sense of a few things, but he also did have the feeling that Percy would have preferred for it all to remain secret for a bit longer.

Preferably until some time after the wedding.

Still, at least Fred and George hadn't done it in front of the whole of Gryffindor – or the whole school – so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

* * *

Four days later, Harry frowned as he looked at his History of Magic work.

"Do you think this makes sense?" he asked. "Wendelin the Weird was trying to protect Muggles who were mistaken for witches, and so she let herself get caught instead of them."

"So why did she say she enjoyed getting burned?" Dean said.

"Because other witches and wizards didn't think it was worth doing, so she came up with an excuse," Harry said. "Already came up with that one."

"It might work," Dean agreed, flipping through a few pages in his history book. "I'm trying to come up with a good other interpretation for Burdock Muldoon."

"This is fun, isn't it?" Hermione asked. "It's really interesting to try and come up with ways that Magical figures of the past could have been different to the way the history book says."

"_Kind_ of fun," Ron said, holding out a hand and wiggling it. "But it's a bit of fun discussion and then thirty minutes of checking and writing, so the fun gets a bit diluted."

"Better than trying to remember how long ago the Wizengamot formed," Neville contributed.

Hermione was about to reply, but then there was a tremendous unearthly shriek from upstairs – accompanied at the same moment by a loud explosion that had Neville springing to his feet and grabbing his wand.

"What was that!?" Colin asked, looking up from a list of third-year electives. "Are we under attack?"

"How?" someone asked.

"Maybe another troll got in?" Katie suggested.

There was a clatter-clatter-_crash_ from the boys' staircase, and Fred, George and Lee all came half-running half-falling down the stairs. There was silver and green glitter cascading off them in clouds, settling to the floor behind them and covering their robes and hair, and when they were nearly to the level of the common room itself one of the twins tripped and fell on top of the other two.

"Ow," the flattened twin wheezed. "Shift!"

The one who'd landed on his brother and his friend duly changed, revealing himself to be Trouble (probably) and Lee rolled off therefore-Strife before groaning something incomprehensible.

The glitter formed a sort of silver-and-green pool around them, which looked oddly beautiful.

"What happened?" Ron said, baffled. "Did one of your experiments go wrong?"

"It looks like they _all_ went wrong," said a Sixth-Year who Harry was fairly sure was called Aloysius.

"I hate the Smiths," the still-human Weasley twin announced. "They got us again."

Trouble shifted back into what Harry decided for the sake of argument was Fred. "I think that Howler back at Christmas was a bad idea."

Harry got up and wandered over, inspecting the glitter more closely.

"This is Muggle glitter, right?" he asked. "It looks like it."

"Is that what that is?" Fred said. "We didn't really have any idea."

"We got a letter," George supplied, brushing glitter off himself in waves. "I think we got a letter. I didn't see it."

"I did," Lee volunteered. "It just said 'To Fred And Or George Weasley.' I thought you'd notice it in a few minutes."

"Why didn't you say?" Fred asked.

Harry licked up some of the glitter, which tasted kind of nice. It had a texture that reminded him of cous cous.

"I thought it'd be funny," Lee told them. "Then it turned out to have loads of glitter and a Howler in it."

"The Howler just had a really loud shriek," George continued. "But when it exploded, it blew the stuff all over the place. You think it's everywhere in here, you should see our room..."

"That sounds like an excellent opportunity for you three to revise cleaning spells," Percy said.

He looked a bit smug.

* * *

"All right, Harry, ready to get going?" Remus asked.

He shifted one of the chairs out of the way, making sure that Harry had enough space to move around a bit.

Harry nodded, rolling his neck around a little, then stopped and frowned.

"Well… ready to practice," he clarified. "But I think I'm going to try and work out what I'm doing wrong."

"You might not be doing anything wrong at all, Harry," Remus told him. "This is a difficult spell. It's not something you have to learn until the NEWT level."

That was a good point, and Harry nodded. "Right, but… I suppose I just don't want to keep doing something wrong if it wouldn't take much of a change to do it right instead."

Remus stepped back. "All right, Harry. If you need any advice, just let me know. I'll be here for the whole session."

Harry smiled his thanks, then twirled his wand around and thought about it.

He'd tried lots of happy memories, and none of them had _properly_ worked. He'd often been able to make a shimmering white mist, which Remus had told him was really good, but not always – sometimes it had just produced a tiny little wisp, and sometimes nothing had happened at all.

Just to reassure himself it was the same as usual, Harry thought about the memory of when he'd seen Hogwarts after being stuck in the woods, and once he was properly concentrating on it he cast the spell. He knew he was pronouncing it right, and after so many tries his wand movement was just right, but what came out was a brief jet of white mist that hung in the air until he dispelled it again.

Maybe it was that that was what he was expecting? The spell was _Expecto Patronum_, after all, and if he wasn't expecting it to work then maybe it wouldn't.

"Can you show me what your Patronus looks like?" he asked.

"Of course, Harry," Remus agreed. _"Expecto Patronum."_

Harry _had_ seen Remus' Patronus before, but not for a while. It still looked quite astonishing, white mist erupting from his wand in a cascade before coalescing together into the form of a sleek albino wolf.

It wasn't really albino, because it didn't have red eyes, but it was close enough.

The fact that it _was_ a wolf was actually a bit strange, Harry remembered, because when Remus had first shown him he'd been _very_ surprised. They were fairly sure now though that it was because between Wolfsbane and the Homorphus charm Remus had come to terms with his being a werewolf, and so his Patronus had changed to fit.

Thinking about how it had changed, though, Harry frowned slightly. Remus had _expected_ his Patronus to be the shape it had been before – a human, apparently – and he hadn't got it.

So maybe it wasn't about expectations.

"Thanks," he said, and Remus cancelled the spell with a swish of his wand.

If it wasn't about expectation, then maybe it was about something else?

Thinking about that, Harry suddenly had an idea.

Maybe it was something to do with how he was being so careful to fix the memory in his mind first. That was what you did to go _between_ in the Pern books, but this wasn't about getting the memory right so much as it was about getting the _emotion_ flowing through you.

Suddenly sure he had the right idea, Harry raised his wand again. He paused, then flicked it and thought about the first memory that came to mind _as_ he was casting the spell.

A confused melange of the first times his friends had adopted their new Animagus forms all rushed through his memory in one go, along with a rush of surging, floating joy that Harry felt for his friends.

"_Expecto Patronum!"_

A cloud of glowing mist erupted out of his wand, then unfurled a pair of wings. Head, legs, body and tail all formed at once, the white mist condensing down to a silvery animal that shone brighter than the candles around the room.

A very familiar animal, one Harry had been imagining for years.

"Oh, well done, Harry!" Remus said, clapping, and the silvery little fire lizard – like a dragon in miniature, about a foot long and with the same wingspan – made a movement that was half flying and half swimming through the air, coming around to land on Harry's outstretched paw.

There was no weight to it at all, but it acted as though it was a real, solid animal – furling its wings and looking up at him, head tilting.

"Ruth," Harry decided, feeling there was really no _other_ name he could give to a white fire lizard or pseudodragon or whatever word you wanted to use.

Ruth opened its mouth in a soundless chirrup, then dissolved into silver sparks and vanished.

"It's about the feeling," Harry explained then, looking up at Remus. "You have to cast the spell at the same time the memory's just coming to mind, because that's when it's the strongest – or, that's what I realized, and tried, and it worked."

"However you got it working for you, that's wonderful," Remus told him. "Are you feeling all right?"

Harry suddenly realized that… he did, actually. Better than he had before, even though he'd cast the finished form of a spell where the _un_finished form could tire you out quite easily.

Seeing his realization, Remus smiled. "That's a good sign of the difference between an unfinished spell you have to work to keep going and a finished spell," he explained. "The Patronus is one of the best spells to show that to you."

Harry cast the spell a second time, wanting to make sure he could do it, and it was much easier this time – his fire-lizard Patronus appearing from his wand and flying a circle around him before moving to hover in front of them both.

"Fortunately, we can't test it on any Dementors," Remus added. "But even an incomplete Patronus can help you against those. The only problem you might have is casting it in such a difficult situation."

He chuckled. "Though with you, maybe all you'd need to do is close your eyes."

Ruth dissolved again, and Harry frowned as a question occurred to him.

"How _does_ a fully formed Patronus drive away Dementors?"

"It depends on the Patronus, to some extent," Remus told him. "And how many Dementors there are. Dementors tend to not want to be near a Patronus to begin with, but a Patronus can also charge into Dementors and knock them away – or, for example, my wolf Patronus would be able to use teeth and claws."

He shrugged. "It's obviously a bit hard to do experiments. But I have read about some well-cast Patronuses emitting bursts of light that knock Dementors flying away."

Harry wondered if Ruth would breathe fire.

But that wasn't really what he was learning the spell for in the first place, and Harry decided his next step was going to be asking Professor Dumbledore if he could learn how to make the Patronus Charm carry messages.

And work out when he _shouldn't_ do it, so he didn't annoy Hedwig.

* * *

"This is pretty neat," Ron declared, as they watched Ruth swim-fly through the air. "Does it think for itself?"

"I don't think so," Harry frowned. "I think Remus would have told me about that."

"I looked up the Patronus when Harry mentioned he was learning it," Hermione told them. "It's generally considered that the Patronus doesn't think for itself but acts how the caster expects that animal to act."

Harry held out a foreleg, and Ruth came down to land on it.

"Like that," Hermione added. "It's very advanced magic, I'm impressed that Harry got it right so quickly."

"He's been trying to learn how to cast it since last year," Ron protested.

"Yeah, that's quick," Neville volunteered. "Gran's still proud of how Dad got it right at sixteen."

"Blimey," Ron muttered.

His griffin statue flew over, circling once and then pouncing down on Ruth, and they all tried not to laugh as the griffin flew straight through. It landed with a _thump_ on the table, nearly rolled over, and shook its head in confusion before furling its wings with a huff.

"Is it me, or is that getting a lot more alive?" Dean asked.

"That happens with magic stuff sometimes," Ron replied, considering it and giving it another tap with his wand to recharge it. "Enchantments, anyway. I think I remember Dad saying his car scooted back into the garage when it was raining once."

He chuckled. "Yeah… Mum didn't like hearing that."

"So when are you going to be learning that other thing from Dumbledore?" Neville asked, as Ruth dissolved. "The message thing."

"Well, I sent Hedwig to ask," Harry explained. "And I got a very nice letter back where he said that he was sorry but he was busy today, and tomorrow, and the day afterwards… and after that he said it would be quicker if he said when he was next available."

He opened his wings slightly in a shrug. "So I'm going to be learning starting in two weeks."

"He _is_ busy, isn't he?" Dean said, shaking his head. "Blimey. You'd think he'd have one of those things Hermione has."

"Maybe he does," Ron shrugged. "Maybe he's got two."

"Having two doesn't help," Hermione told them.

"Can't hurt, though, right?" Ron asked.

"That's not even _close_ to the point."

* * *

The wait was a bit annoying, but Harry did have plenty to do so it wasn't all that bad.

Ron had asked if that spell jammer stuff was going to turn up in the Dungeons and Dragons game, and Harry had told him it wasn't going to be just yet but it might appear later. That was apparently enough to get Ron interested in joining, and after some careful thought and discussion Harry scheduled things so that the group met Radagast the Brown.

Ron voiced Radagast as a sort of Hagrid type person, one with a big fell-winged beast with a sprained wing he was taking care of, then told them that he was far too busy to come along on their journey but that one of his friends wanted to see some new experiences. The friend was Ron's _actual_ new character, a magic using apprentice who just _happened_ to also be a squirrel.

(Harry wasn't sure if he'd made Ron's squirrel properly fitting in with how powerful everyone else was, but the best way to be sure was probably just to let it happen and see how it went.)

After that, they began moving west towards the Grey Havens, which was how Harry was going to get them adventuring in a way that ended with finding one of the boats of Earendil the Mariner.

It made sense to him, anyway.

* * *

Harry did check the Marauder's Map late at night a few times, but only saw 'Empress' appear on the map one other time. He also got asked to check through it for the name Anansi (Lee Jordan's tarantula) which had gone missing, but there was no sign of the spider at all.

It was a bit peculiar, really.

Even asking Sirius didn't help, because he said that the Map should show everything in the castle but that there might be some places they'd never found and that anything with a name and an identity should show up.

That led to a late-night discussion about Horcruxes, where Harry checked Dumbledore's office on the map and they decided that Horcruxes weren't enough of a person to show up in the first place. They also couldn't find Ron's griffin statue, but the ghosts and the pets did appear.

"_The problem is really that some of that spell work was Prongs',"_ Sirius said, after they'd concluded that the few students who were born in another country had the name that they'd started with, but that the one teacher on the staff who'd changed her name on marriage had her _married_ name shown on the map. _"I could help you with the bits I did, and Remus could help you with the bits he did, but some of it was done by your father and that's sort of… not really something we can check to be sure."_

He shrugged, and looked between the mirror on his end and a book. _"How do the ghosts show up? I know Nearly Headless Nick's real name is Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington, or something like that."_

Harry checked. "It gives his real name. But I found the Bloody Baron, once, and he only showed up as the Bloody Baron."

"_Well, I very much doubt _that_ was his real name,"_ Sirius mused. _"Unless they had a _really_ strange fashion in baby names back whenever he was born."_

Harry sniggered. "Maybe there's a star that was called that?"

"_Watch it,"_ Sirius warned, waggling his eyebrows. _"Well, I'm stumped. Maybe it is a ghost's name… or you could ask Dumbledore when you see him. He'll know."_

Harry nodded.

That did sound like the best idea, really. And even if Dumbledore _didn't_ know, he'd at least be warned about it.

"Any idea where the House Elves live?" he asked, suddenly struck by a realization.

"_...bloody hell, none of us ever thought about that,"_ Sirius admitted. _"It wouldn't be on the map. Well done, Harry, this is what makes you smarter than us thicko Purebloods."_

"It'd be a bit of an odd name for a House Elf, though," Harry said, thinking about it and flicking his tail.

"_It's all Greek to me,"_ Sirius advised him gravely.

* * *

Today's password on Dumbledore's door happened to be "Chewits".

Harry was quite pleased by that one, as he was fairly sure he'd introduced Dumbledore to the Muggle sweet back in second year. The gargoyle didn't seem to have any opinion on it, but then again Harry wasn't sure where it was on the scale which included animated griffin statues, ghosts, pets, portraits and pupils.

"Hold on a moment," Dumbledore requested, as Harry approached the top of the stairs. "I've been making a few mistakes recently, so I would like to see if I can work out who it is coming up the stairs."

Harry wanted to say okay, but realized that that would give the game away.

Dumbledore hummed for a moment, obviously thinking, then spoke up. "Ah! It must be Harry. Do come in."

Harry noticed the small silvered mirror that Dumbledore had floated into place over the pause, but smiled and didn't say anything.

"I take it you spotted my little trick?" the Headmaster asked, eyes twinkling. "I'm afraid that it was the best I could do."

He waved Harry to one of the armchairs. "Now, Harry, I believe we have a little time for pleasantries. How is your schooling going?"

"I think it's going well," Harry replied, after thinking about it a bit. "My marks seem to be going okay, and I feel kind of like I shouldn't do much _more_ or I'd be overworked. But I'm keeping up with everything."

"Excellent," Dumbledore told him. "Take it from me, Harry, being overworked is a dreadful shame and you should avoid it if possible. Sadly, I've found myself trapped into entirely too many jobs and people seem to think I do a good job at all of them, so what am I to do."

Harry nodded, absorbing that.

"There was one thing that was a bit weird, Sir," he said. "Should we talk about it now or later?"

"I will entirely trust your judgement on the matter, Harry," Dumbledore decided.

"I think maybe we should talk about it now, then," the dragon said, after a bit of thought, and retrieved the blank old parchment from under his wing along with the scraps he'd scribbled on.

Laying the parchment out on the desk, he tapped it with his wand. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

Dumbledore watched in silence as the map drew itself out in lines of ink from his wand, eyebrows raising over his half-moon spectacles.

"So this is the famous Marauder's Map," he said, interested.

"Is it famous, Professor?" Harry asked. "I know Fred and George had it."

"I believe it's passed through many hands in the last two decades, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "Though quite often the hands are those of our dear caretaker Argus. I've never actually had a chance to see it myself before, though – if I may?"

Harry slid it across the desk, and Dumbledore inspected it for a few minutes.

"This is a remarkable piece of spellwork," he said, eventually. "Based on a Protean Charm, I believe, but with so many additional layers that I believe I would have to see about awarding Sirius an extra NEWT in Charms simply for being involved with it, had I seen it before now."

Using his own wand to move it around as if he'd been taught, Dumbledore examined a section of the map for several long seconds.

"While impressive, Harry, I am not so foolish as to believe you would simply show me this to satisfy curiosity you did not know I had," he said, smiling, and slid the map back across the desk. "And I do believe it is yours, so so long as you use it well I believe I will not have to officially notice it. Unofficially, therefore, might I ask why you brought it up?"

"It's something I saw a few weeks ago," Harry explained. "You saw how the Map shows names?" Dumbledore nodded, and Harry continued. "I saw an odd name on the map late at night, down near where Nora's room is, and it vanished a bit later."

He showed Dumbledore the two parchments. "It appeared like this, in what I think are Greek letters, but I translated it."

Dumbledore adjusted his glasses, looking very closely at the Greek letters, and then turned his gaze up to Harry.

"Do you know what this means, Harry?" he asked.

"Empress?" Harry guessed.

"That is the translation, yes," Dumbledore agreed, sounding grave. "The female form of the Greek for 'Emperor' - or, in the original Greek, 'Basilissa'."

Harry wasn't sure what that could mean, at first. It was like there was a solution there but it wasn't quite in reach.

"Do you remember what you told me Dobby said last year, Harry?" Dumbledore asked. "About the Chamber of Secrets?"

That did it. The reminder made everything drop into place at once – Dobby's warning about the Chamber of Secrets being opened, the idea of Salazar Slytherin's monster, the name Basilissa…

"A basilisk?" he asked.

"Yes," Dumbledore confirmed, heavily.

"But if Empress _is_ a basilisk, and she's Slytherin's Monster..." Harry began, frowning. "I definitely saw her moving around the castle. Why hasn't anyone died?"

Dumbledore blinked, taken slightly aback, then chuckled. "Goodness. Well done, Harry, you are quite right. There is still something we are missing here, and I fear I am being entirely too gloomy."

"Well, there is still a basilisk in the school," Harry said. "But she's been here for a thousand years so far. Has anyone died?"

"I do not believe so," Dumbledore mused, then shook his head. "No. I _do_ believe so, and I think that is the solution to an old mystery."

He stood up and walked over to one of the cabinets in the wall. Fawkes watched him move, then spread his wings and began to sing.

It was beautiful, resonant music that hung in the air like shimmering gold, filling Harry up with wonder so he thought he would burst, and he almost forgot Dumbledore was even in the room until the headmaster placed a book on the desk – Tom Riddle's diary, old and worn even though Harry knew it was empty. (Well, empty of words, though full of more than the usual amount of Tom Riddle.)

"Fifty-one years ago, a girl named Myrtle Warren died at this school," Dumbledore told Harry. "There was not a single mark on her body, and nobody knew quite how she could have died… unless, as I now believe, she was killed by the gaze of a basilisk. She may well have been the first person murdered by Tom Riddle, and used to create his first Horcrux."

Some small part of Harry's mind pointed out that this was not how he had been expecting his Patronus lesson to go.

"Is there a reason you didn't think it was a basilisk at the time, Professor?" he asked, and realized he was raising his voice slightly to be heard over the beautiful phoenix song.

"Strange as it may seem, Harry, basilisks are not well known," Dumbledore told him. "I am well aware of course that you enjoy many Muggle books, but most wizards who know much about magical beasts know about them from Mr. Scamander's marvellous work – a work to which the basilisk was only added in the seventh edition, from… nineteen forty-nine, I believe."

A book floated over from Dumbledore's extensive bookshelf, and Dumbledore opened the front cover to check. "Ah, nineteen forty-eight. I was rather close."

"I wonder if we could speak to her," Harry said. "Safely, I mean."

"It may not be possible, Harry," Dumbledore told him sorrowfully. "As a snake, she doubtless speaks the language of snakes – Parseltongue – and as his descendant it is quite possible Tom had that power… but if she ever knew another language it would have to be Old English, for Salazar Slytherin was from the Fens which we know as the area around Cambridge."

That was a problem, and Harry frowned.

"There is still a lot we do not know," Dumbledore added. "One thing that puzzles me in particular is how it was that Tom Riddle created his first Horcrux."

He tapped the diary with a finger, then regarded Harry closely. "I must confess, Harry, that I know how it is that a Horcrux may be created – though I have often wished I never discovered it. It is a foul magic, and it involves tearing one's soul with an act of murder and then performing dark rituals to complete the split and place the torn-off part of the soul in its new receptacle."

Harry saw what he thought Dumbledore meant straight away. "Doesn't that mean that – if he used Myrtle's death to create his first Horcrux, and he had Empress actually kill her, then… does that make sense? It would mean she'd be a _weapon_, not a thinking, um, creature."

"That is another matter we do not have enough information about," Dumbledore admitted. "Would that we could ask her, indeed."

He sighed. "This is a dark topic, Harry, and I apologize for burdening you with it at such a young age. It seems Hogwarts has many mysteries even for an old man such as myself."

Harry thought that if nobody had been hurt for the last thousand years except for Myrtle, and she'd only been hurt when Tom Riddle had actually been ordering Empress around, then maybe she wasn't _as_ dangerous as a thousand-year-old basilisk might suggest.

Then he had an idea. It was a not-well-formed idea, an idea which might not work, but it was an idea that _might_ work and he thought he should probably try it if he got a chance.

"Can we do that Patronus lesson?" he asked.

"Goodness me," Dumbledore said, jumping slightly in his chair. "I quite forgot why we were here in the first place. If you will excuse me, Harry, I must put this back."

Harry watched as Dumbledore took the diary back over to where he'd retrieved it, then returned to join Harry – in the other armchair, this time, rather than behind the desk. As he did, Fawkes finally stopped singing, but his voice seemed to hang in the air.

"The Patronus Charm is a remarkable piece of charms work," Dumbledore told him then. "Each one is unique, as I believe I told you before – may I see yours?"

Harry didn't have a problem with that. It took him a few tries to summon his Patronus – the conversation they'd had earlier was still distracting him – and when he got it right it was by thinking about the change that had come over Kreacher and Sirius' relationship since the whole story with the locket had come out.

Ruth's wings flashed silver in the light of the office, and Dumbledore applauded as the draconic shape flew around to 'land' on the arm of the chair.

"A wonderful Patronus, Harry, I must say. Forming a corporeal Patronus is a vital part of this spell, and it seems you have already got that part working quite well."

His own wand came up, and he cast his Patronus – a great silver phoenix which Harry had seen before, and which hovered in front of the headmaster with wings spread but still.

"The most important new part of this spell is that you must _want_ to send the message," he said, enunciating clearly.

The phoenix beat its wings, once, and vanished in a flash of silver light. At the exact same moment, another flash of silver light appeared right in front of Harry and resolved into a silvery phoenix Patronus.

"_The most important new part of this spell is that you must _want_ to send the message,"_ the phoenix Patronus said in Dumbledore's voice, then dissolved in a cloud of sparks.

"You mean when you cast the spell?" Harry checked, tail flicking idly. "So you need to concentrate on the happy memory _and_ on what you want to happen?"

Dumbledore beamed. "Very well done, Harry. That is most – if not all – of why this spell is so difficult. Once you have managed to hold both desires in your mind at once when you cast your Patronus, you must simply tell them what message you want to send."

Put that way, it seemed quite simple, though simple wasn't anything like _easy_, and Harry nodded a bit dubiously.

"Is there a way to tell if you've cast it properly?" he asked. "Except for seeing if the Patronus takes the message away, that is."

"Alas, not at first," Dumbledore admitted. "Of course, you will doubtless be aware if you have failed to keep the happy memory in mind, because the spell will not produce a Patronus at all. But if the happy memory is the only one that you focus on, it will simply produce a Patronus which looks at you in bafflement."

He reached into one of his pockets and drew out a bag of marbles, which he handed to Harry to snack on. "But then, I find that a little bafflement is a wonderful thing to share. I myself am perpetually baffled by even the smallest things, and it is a delight to see everyone around me feeling the same."

* * *

Dumbledore had made an hour and a half in his schedule for Harry, and they used all of it. None of the rest of what they talked about was as heavy as the riddle of Empress (or the Empress of Riddle) right at the start, but in between attempts at the modified Patronus Harry was asked how he was doing at each of his subjects and how his fire spells were getting on.

The headmaster also shared a few stories of the Marauders, or the first Marauders, or to be exact Harry's dad. Those were really quite interesting to listen to, and Harry was particularly touched by just how it was that a prankster like James Potter had been able to actually become Head Boy.

Apparently it had partly been driven by romance, but mostly by how Dumbledore himself had gently encouraged Harry's dad towards less rule-breaking pursuits.

From what Dumbledore said of the Singing Blancmange incident (an act officially unsolved at Hogwarts to this day, but which Sirius had mentioned as one of their best) Harry had the distinct feeling that what Dumbledore had managed was mostly moving James Potter away from _obvious_ rule breaking.

It was a really very pleasant evening, even if Harry did end up leaving the office without having mastered the modified Patronus. (Though then again, that was a spell it was relatively easy to practice without having someone helping.)

* * *

Over the next few days, Harry thought about his plan to see whether he was right about Empress.

It was a sort of complicated plan, with a lot of interlocking steps, but that sounded about right to him. If you couldn't come up with a way to skip needing a plan at all, there wasn't anything wrong with having a sort of complicated plan if it meant you covered all the things you had to think about.

It was sort of like those checklists they used on aircraft and spaceships, where you did all the steps in order because taking more time was much better than missing something. It also meant Harry could turn the idea over and over in his head, to make sure it wasn't very likely it would go wrong.

Fortunately, the first step was something that would probably be a good idea to do anyway.

* * *

"Morning, Harry," Hagrid said, giving Harry a nod. "What brings you down here?"

"Harry!" Nora added brightly.

She held up a large wooden chicken. "Hagrid made this for me!"

"Oh, is that for Easter?" Harry asked.

He wasn't sure if he'd asked in English or Dragonish, but Hagrid nodded. "Thought I'd see about gettin' her some eggs, too. Mite tricky to get hold of an ostrich egg though."

Harry supposed it probably would be.

"I think the House Elves could do something with chocolate," he suggested. "I wanted to ask you about something, though."

"Right, right," Hagrid said. "Come on into the hut. I've got a few rock cakes in the tin."

"That sounds great!" Harry smiled. Everyone else thought Hagrid's rock cakes were a bit too much rock and not enough cake, but Harry tended to think that any mix of rock and cake could work for him depending on how he felt.

Hagrid's were a perfectly nice mix.

He crunched his way through one as Hagrid made tea, then took out the pair of mirrors he'd got in Janus Gallowglass ages ago – the ones he hadn't needed since Sirius had shared the pair that had originally belonged to his father.

"I was wondering if it'd be a good idea to show Nora how to use one of these," Harry explained. "That way we'd be able to talk and stuff."

"Hmm," Hagrid said, thinking about it. "Can't say I've used one of those before meself. How do they work?"

"If you need to call the person with the mirror on the other end, you hold onto it and say the person's name," Harry explained. "That makes it activate, unless it's one of the ones where it only gets hot as a warning."

He demonstrated, giving one of them to Hagrid and saying 'Rubeus Hagrid' into the other, and after a moment his big friend chuckled and waved.

"I can see how that would be useful, right enough. Does it work in Dragonish?"

"I'll check," Harry said, telling the mirror to go blank. Then he looked up at Nora, who was watching with bright-eyed curiosity, and said 'Rubeus Hagrid' again.

Sure enough, the mirror activated. Harry wondered if that meant that – like Mermish – Dragonish was a language that was magically equivalent to English (or whatever other language you were trying to speak).

_That_ made him wonder if maybe you could just teach everyone Dragonish, and they'd all understand it as if it was in their own language. It sounded like that probably wouldn't work for logical reasons, but Wizards had never exactly seemed entirely on board with logic to Harry and he supposed it was entirely possible that the same would apply to their languages.

Just to be sure, Harry took his wand out of his robes and pointed it away from anything important. _"Lumos,"_ he said, looking at Nora again, and the wand duly lit up.

Explaining what he was doing to Hagrid, Harry tried something else – he knew that the word Nox was Latin for 'Night', and so he tried using Dragonish to cast that spell as well. Saying 'Night' in Dragonish didn't work, but saying 'Nox' did even though Hagrid agreed that the words sounded exactly the same.

It was all _very_ confusing.

Once that distraction was over, though, Harry showed Nora the mirror and how someone could look into one mirror and see what was coming out of the other.

"But that's just me," Nora said, tilting her head. "I saw a mirror before. It was me."

"I know," Harry told her. "That's how mirrors normally work. This one's been enchanted, though, so you can make it show someone else."

The big dragoness looked sort of skeptical, until Harry showed her by propping one mirror up so she could see it and then carrying the other mirror into Hagrid's hut. Then she was fascinated, giving the mirror an occasional delicate poke with her claw as if to confirm either that it wasn't a reflection or that she couldn't just go straight through the mirror and out the other side.

Harry sort of thought she might need a bigger mirror, but she was very happy to be given the little one, and because he wasn't in any sort of hurry to get this sorted out Harry left the other end of the mirror with Hagrid for now.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Writing Dumbledore can be pretty fun.

And puzzles lead to puzzlement; Harry is feeling a little bit like Matthias right now. It's kind of interesting to assemble available tools from the series.

Next chapter tomorrow.


	47. The Empress Of Language Barriers

Now that he had a plan, Harry spent most of his spare waking hours working on his Patronus.

Of course, the definition of 'spare' was a little more restrictive in reality than it was whenever a phrase like that turned up in books.

The idea that Harry had always got when reading about someone spending most of their spare time working on something was that they spent, well, most of their time working on it. But it turned out that it was a lot easier to skip over several hours' worth of time doing non-spare-hours work in a book than it was as an actual person.

There were lessons, obviously, and nobody could really view those as spare time – unless you were like Ron and had trouble staying awake in History of Magic. (Or, come to think of it, just about anyone. Hermione was about the only human who seemed to have no trouble staying awake through the History of Magic lessons.)

Then there was the time everyone was doing homework. It was nice how they did their homework in groups – it always seemed to make what might have been tedious into nothing of the sort – but it did also mean that Harry was too busy doing homework to practice non-homework magic.

On top of all those things were the clubs, which were fun (and which had other people who enjoyed them as well), and when that was all added up Harry really only spent a little time working on his modified Patronus spell.

It was funny how that all worked out. And Harry didn't really feel in enough of a hurry to ask Hermione for her time travel thing.

Besides, sending messages in the middle of a time travel thing seemed like the fastest way to cause great big problems that would need Ruth to sort out, and Harry's Patronus was only _called_ Ruth.

That made sense to him, and he was sticking with it.

* * *

"The way school holidays work is kind of weird," Dean said, apropos of nothing in particular as they were most of the way through doing some Charms work.

Ron looked up. "How's that?"

"Well… there's a couple of weeks around Christmas, and a couple of weeks around Easter," Dean outlined. "And then a great big long couple of months in summer. But why isn't it a month in summer, a month around Christmas and a month around Easter?"

"Maybe because that would make it harder for everyone to remember everything for exams," Hermione suggested.

"But they give us loads of homework over the Easter holidays anyway," Dean countered. "Anyone who goes home like me just spends most of their time doing it, or that's what it feels like – I've already got a week's worth and we've still got half of the last week before the Easter holiday to go."

"It could just be that the teachers need some time off?" Neville suggested. "If you think about it, during the holidays those of us who stay at the castle may as well be looking after ourselves. We don't have much to do with the teachers and they don't have much to do with us, so they could just be spending the time doing… I don't know, broom racing?"

"I'd love to see Hagrid on a broom," Ron said. "Would it have to be made out of a, um… a telephone pole?"

"That's right," Harry told him with a nod, and Ron looked proud. "But I'm not sure if you _could_ make a broom out of a telephone pole."

"Maybe you could before all the metal stuff got drilled into it," Dean mused. "What do you think, Hermione?"

"I know there are special forests that are preferred to produce broom wood," Hermione answered, thinking about it. "But really what matters are the charms, and so long as you can put those on the wood you _could_ use any wood at all."

She put down her quill. "It's the same thing with carpets. The spells could be put on any carpet, so before flying carpets were banned in Britain the best were Axminsters even though that's a Muggle carpet company."

"Wait, it is?" Ron asked. "Wow. I knew they made really good flying carpets, but I didn't know they were Muggles. I always thought it was some wizard company."

"If they're a wizard company, they have terrible secrecy," Hermione told him. "Now, are we going to finish this Charms essay?"

"Hold on, I'm not finished," Dean said. "Because… Hogwarts was founded a thousand years ago, and was there any of the quick ways of getting around then? Like the Floo, or Apparating?"

"The Floo was established in Sixteen Ninety-Two," Hermione answered that one quickly. "And Apparition isn't easy. I think that's why the Summer Holiday is so long, to give people time to get back home without needing to do things like Apparate."

"I wonder if people ever considered riding dragons to get home," Harry said.

"Well, no, mate," Ron countered. "Because most dragons would eat people who tried to ride them. Technically speaking, Nora's weird and you're weirder."

He waved a hand. "You're lucky we like weird."

Harry snorted at that, touched.

"Charms!" Hermione reminded them.

* * *

Twenty minutes or so later, the essay was finally behind them.

"Anyone think we're going to be _using_ that last spell, ever?" Ron asked, putting his quill down. "As grown ups, I mean. Why not just summon or banish something, or levitate?"

"It might have some use for you," Neville pointed out mildly. "If you transformed into Nutkin and then used _Carpe Retractum_, you'd be being towed along really easily."

"Oh, yeah, good point," Ron admitted. "Maybe I should have put that in the essay..."

As his friends kept talking, Harry closed his eyes – thinking about all sorts of things, but especially about what it had been like for his parents when they were at school.

Was this how it had felt for them with their friends?

Suddenly he had a powerful urge to ask Sirius, and before he'd had a second thought his wand was twirling. _"Expecto Patronum."_

Ruth emerged from his wand in a coil of light, and flew up to hover in front of his muzzle – ethereal head quirked attentively, wings spread but still.

"I think I've got it," Harry said, and then the Patronus vanished.

"...blimey, mate, bit confident?" Ron asked.

"That wasn't what I was going to say," Harry protested. "It just seemed to be working, and I was suddenly surprised..."

He went to get his mirror out of his pocket, and Sirius appeared on it just before he was going to turn it on.

"_Well done, Harry!"_ his dogfather said. _"What made it work?"_

"I was suddenly wondering how it felt when you were all friends at school," Harry explained. "And I wanted to ask you, and… well..."

It sounded a bit boring, when he thought about it like that.

"_Spells can be like that,"_ Sirius shrugged. _"A Marauder who will not be named once spent three days trying to get the summoning charm right, and the first time he cast it successfully underwear came zipping out of my trunk into his hands."_

He leaned closer to the mirror. _"It wasn't my underwear, and they caught him with it. Bit embarrassing all round, except for me because I was too busy laughing my head off."_

* * *

With that spell under his belt, or in his wand, or whatever it was that wizards said to mean the same sort of thing, Harry had a few more things to get sorted out before the end of term.

Naturally, the first thing was to go up to see Hedwig.

Atop one of the shorter towers of Hogwarts castle, under a sky which looked like it was seriously considering getting around to the whole rain thing as soon as it could get everything sorted out, Harry demonstrated the silver-dragon he could conjure.

"This means I can send messages to people quickly," he explained, and Hedwig examined his Patronus with calm, avian eyes. "But it's not the best thing for all situations."

He frowned, wondering how to describe it. "If I want to send a long letter, then it's best to send you. If I want it to be something someone can go over more than once, it's definitely best to send you – and you're also good for sending letters to people like Dean, because you're a lot cleverer than Ruth."

His owl preened herself at that, and flapped a wing.

"You are," Harry chuckled. "If I sent Ruth with a message to Dean, and he was having dinner with his Muggle relatives who didn't know about magic, that would wreck it and I'd get in trouble because Ruth would just appear in front of Dean anyway. But if I sent _you_ with a message to Dean, you'd know to put it on his table or post it through the letterbox or wait until he was on his own."

After a pause, Hedwig clacked her beak and looked inquisitively at him.

"I wanted to make sure you knew," Harry explained. "And I don't want you to feel like I'm replacing you or anything."

He reached into his robes, retrieving a letter. "Oh, and I wanted to send this off to Charlie Weasley."

Hedwig barked imperiously, sticking her leg out.

"I shouldn't have been worried," Harry admitted, tying the letter to her leg.

It had been a little bit tricky at first to get used to doing that, instead of just giving it to Hedwig and having her carry it, but Ron and Neville had told him it was better for long journeys and Hedwig seemed to appreciate it.

Once it was securely in place, Hedwig stepped back and held up a wing to feel the wind. A moment's pause and she was facing directly into it, and she spread her wings and was airborne in a moment.

Harry took flight as well to give her a send-off, following her half a mile south towards either Romania or Devon – he wasn't sure where Charlie was at the moment – then turned back to the castle.

The funny thing was, if he had a choice between having Ruth and Hedwig or having just one fire-lizard, he'd probably pick the way he had it now. This way gave him options, and if Dungeons and Dragons had taught him one thing it was that having options was a nice thing to have.

As it happened, it had also taught him quite a lot of practical Arithmancy and how to draw a map.

* * *

When the Easter Holidays arrived, Harry got started on the bits of the plan he'd worked out.

The first bit was to go down to Hagrid's hut and ask if he could borrow the mirror for a week or so.

"Oh, sure, Harry," Hagrid said straight away. "Don't mind telling you, though, it's a nice gift you got me there."

"We talk!" Nora contributed. "After I go to bed!"

She reached up a claw to scratch the side of her neck. "Not every night, though. Some nights I'm too sleepy."

"I sometimes use a mirror I've got to talk to Sirius," Harry told her – and by extension Hagrid, who he was fairly sure would get most of it. "He's a _bit_ like… for me what Hagrid is for you."

"Oh," Nora said, nodding. "Dad!"

Hagrid gave Nora a spontaneous hug, which surprised Nora so much she nearly sneezed out a gout of flame, and Harry waved his paw a bit before clarifying. "It's more like… he's _not_ my dad, but he does some of the things a dad does. Less of the things than Hagrid does for you."

"Okay." Nora replied, with an expression of ferocious concentration on her muzzle.

Harry could easily tell when she just decided to stop thinking too hard about it and instead just hug Hagrid back, and he stepped back a little while thinking about what the Fantastic Beasts book had said about how dangerous Norwegian Ridgebacks were.

It wasn't that he didn't think Nora _could_ be dangerous. It was just that, looking at this, it was clear that Nora was mostly dangerous to the sort of people who she thought might be dangerous to her friends – like Hagrid, or Harry himself.

After a minute, Harry decided that he should probably just leave them to hug, and did his best to pick up the mirror and take off as silently as possible.

It seemed quite quiet to him, though he did wonder if perhaps he should take lessons from the owls.

Though, then again, it did seem as though 'being quiet' was the sort of thing there should be a spell for. Harry couldn't remember running into any in the books he'd read, at least none that was obviously an actual real wizarding spell instead of either something from one of those books written by Muggles (where it _might_ be something magic could do, but it could just be a coincidence) or one of those books written by Wizards or Witches where they had magic spells that could do whatever made it convenient for the author.

There was that invisibility cloak he had (and never really used, despite Sirius coming up with ideas for it and Trouble and Strife occasionally begging him to let them borrow it) but that was about being _invisible_ not _inaudible_. Having something that was the other way around sounded considerably less useful, overall.

Then Harry had a sudden moment of inspiration.

* * *

That evening, Harry was sitting in the common room reading.

The book wasn't really very important. It was the latest of the books by Anne McCaffrey, called Lyon's Pride and continuing the story of the Talents of Earth, but he'd already read it and he was just reading it again for something to do.

The important thing was his bookmark, which showed all sorts of dots moving all over the place, and in particular two dots labelled Fred Weasley and George Weasley moving towards the portrait hole.

Harry watched closely as they stopped in front of the Fat Lady, giving the password, and then the twins clambered through one after another.

"Hello!" he said, putting his bookmark in the book and carrying it over. "How are you two?"

"Why, very well, thank you," said Fred.

"Quite as well as usual," George agreed. "In fact, I'd say we're quite ready for Easter."

"Don't say that," Fred protested. "You'll give the game away."

"I'd have to be very careless to give the game away," George replied. "Especially since the game doesn't have anything to do with Easter."

"Or is that just something you're saying to deceive Harry – correctly, I might add – about whether or not our latest plan is Easter-related?" Fred asked.

Harry shrugged his wings. "I'm not really sure I follow that, to be honest."

He sighed. "I mean, it took me two and a half years to work out that _you're_ Fred and _you_ are George."

"Beginner's luck, that's what I call it," George opined.

"I agree, Fred," Fred said.

"And nobody said beginner's luck had to be good, George," George agreed.

Harry just smiled.

It really _had_ taken him an embarrassingly long time to work out that he could smell the difference between the twins, though it had only technically been about a year that they'd smelled of anything different at all. By itself that only would have let him know which twin was Trouble and which twin was Strife, but then he'd remembered that the Marauder's Map _could_ tell the difference.

He did sort of wonder if his father and the other Marauders had had to deal with twins themselves, though. And not the easily-un-confused sorts of twins, like Taira and Anna.

* * *

"You all right, Harry?" Ron asked, one evening.

"I think so," Harry replied, looking down at himself and then around where he was sitting – just in case he'd accidentally set fire to something.

It hadn't happened yet, but you never knew.

"It seems like you're staying up later, is all," Ron explained. "And getting up later, too."

"How do you know, Ron?" Neville chuckled. "Don't you usually get up at ten in the morning during holidays?"

"Absolutely," Ron agreed. "And Harry's doing the same thing. And he hardly needs any sleep compared to us, so how late is _he_ staying up?"

"I do still get at least six hours," Harry protested. "I just keep losing track of time – I'm catching up on my reading, and then I look up and realize it's gone past midnight."

"A long way past midnight," Ron agreed, then shrugged. "Whatever. I'm not your mum. Just wanted to check."

Harry smiled his thanks, though he did feel a bit bad. He _did_ tend to lose track of time, that was true, but he wasn't just catching up on his reading.

"Is it something with Care of Magical Creatures?" Neville asked. "I know Hermione and Dean are both home for the holiday – did you get any hard homework for that?"

"No, not really," Harry assured him. "It's just doing two feet on the differences between how Muggles think about creatures and what's true."

His friends gave him knowing looks.

"You're doing dragons, aren't you?" Neville asked.

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It's kind of hard to work out how much to say while keeping it down to two feet, though. Muggles have a_ lot_ of ideas about dragons."

He rummaged around with the books down by his ankles, and pulled out one by Robert Swindells. "This one is about a dragon costume for four people that sort of… comes to life and tries to kill people? It's weird."

"It sounds it," Ron agreed. "Does it actually kill anyone?"

"No, it gets stopped," Harry assured him. "But it's a weird sort of dragon, it's not got any wings and it's more of a great big worm than anything."

"Blimey," Ron snorted. "Attack of the killer flobberworm."

"I'm not sure those words go together," Neville protested.

"What, killer flobberworm?" Harry asked.

"Or flobberworm and attack," Neville shrugged. "Really the only words that go together there are attack and killer."

"And of the," Ron pointed out. "Of the go with anything."

* * *

Late that same night, Harry put a scrap of parchment in the book he was reading and looked at the front cover.

It still said 'dragon tears', and it still had a picture of a gemstone with a dragon in it on the cover. But he had this funny feeling that there wasn't going to be an actual _dragon_ in this book, even though there were certainly magical things happening one way or another.

It was sort of funny to think about, how there were so many kinds of dragon Muggles thought of, and then there were so many more ways where Muggles – and wizards – liked to use the name dragon for things that only slightly involved a dragon. Even Mr. Malfoy had used the name Draco for his son, and Draco wasn't even the most dragony person in the school year.

Harry wasn't complaining, exactly. It was nice to be a dragon when everyone thought dragons were cool, after all. It just made it a bit harder to tell if he was reading the sort of book where there was a dragon at the end, or the sort of book where there wasn't.

Then he noticed the map on the table, and stopped worrying about that sort of thing.

Nora was in her room in the castle, the same as always. But there was another name on the map as well, a dot neatly labelled as βασίλισσα, and she was almost motionless just outside Nora's room.

Harry took a steadying breath, and got out the other end of the mirror.

"Nora," he whispered, holding it facing down and away from him, and pricked his ears up to listen.

The mirror itself made no sound when it activated, and Harry was as quiet as he could be. But sound came through anyway, soft whispers from a voice Harry had never heard before.

"_Sentences can be put together to make a longer sentence. The simplest way is to join them with words that are meant for that."_

A pause, and perhaps a slight rustling.

"_I feel cold. I would like a nap. Those can become, I feel cold and I would like a nap."_

Harry touched the mirror and told it to go blank, still in a whisper, then sat back with a hiss of breath. The common room was empty and still, and when Harry had exhaled he was quite aware of how he was the only person awake.

Then he checked the Marauder's Map again.

Empress was still where she'd been before, and after a moment Harry checked on Professor Dumbledore's office. The Headmaster was there, in what Harry thought was the bedroom bit, and he was walking around a bit rather than lying there asleep.

Clearing his throat and doing his best to concentrate, Harry took his wand and twirled it. _"Expecto Patronum."_

Ruth coiled lazily out of his wand, wings coming out like coils of smoke, then flew up to hover in front of Harry's face.

"Professor," Harry began. "Empress is down near Nora's room and teaching her how to speak. And I _think_ I speak Parseltongue."

Ruth turned as if to leave, and vanished in a little flash of white light.

One of the things Harry remembered about what happened next was how obvious it was that Professor Dumbledore had just got the message. He stood completely still on the map for about four seconds, then started moving more quickly.

Fifteen seconds later, Dumbledore vanished from the Map's version of his office, and appeared with a tiny little _crack_ in the Gryffindor common room just in front of Harry.

"Ah, Harry," he said, with a pleasant smile. "Commendable sense in working all this out from the comfort of an armchair. Would you be willing to come with me while we discuss just how you did it?"

"Of course, Professor," Harry agreed, picking up the mirror and folding up the Map to take with them.

He sort of had the feeling he might need them both.

* * *

It was quite a long way down from the Gryffindor Common Room to the dungeons, and Harry explained all his reasoning on the way down there – how he'd remembered what Nora had said about hearing things in her dreams, and how he'd noticed Empress around there. The way that nobody had worked out _why_ Nora had started speaking Dragonish, or rather why no other dragon Harry had ever run into had _understood_ dragonish in the first place.

"So I thought, either dragons don't need to learn the language or they do," Harry said, as they reached the third floor and kept going. "And if they don't need to learn it, then all those other dragons I've been to go and meet should have known it… but if they _do, _then Nora needed to learn it from someone."

"Most intelligent of you, Harry," Dumbledore told him, with a smile.

He was about to go on, but someone was coming up the stairs.

"Who's that there?" asked a voice Harry was sort of familiar with.

In reply, Dumbledore waved his wand to conjure a brighter light than Harry's wand.

"Ah, Headmaster," the boy said, and Harry recognized him now as the Fifth-Year Hufflepuff Prefect – and Hufflepuff Seeker – Cedric Diggory.

Harry was sort of impressed with Cedric because he was able to be a Prefect _and_ get good marks on his subjects _and_ do well as a Quidditch player. Even with a Time Turner that probably wasn't very easy.

"Is everything all right?" Cedric asked. "Oh, good evening, Harry. Something wrong?"

"Perhaps, Mr. Diggory, perhaps," Dumbledore answered. "I must say that I do not think I could ever say_ everything_ was all right, because everything is so very big. I can however tell you that I am quite aware that Mr. Potter is out of his dorms after curfew, and I suspect that if he ever gets in trouble for it I will simply have to inform the Headmaster of the very good reason why."

"All right, Headmaster," Cedric chuckled. "I'm going to check the fourth floor, and then come back down floor by floor and go to bed."

"A fine plan," Dumbledore pronounced. "Don't let us delay your somewhat long journey to bed."

Harry watched as Cedric left, then turned his attention to the Marauder's Map again.

Empress was still where she'd been before, but Harry didn't know how long that was going to last.

"Do you know how we're going to do this, Sir?" he asked. "She's just been teaching Nora how to speak, and I don't think that's very dangerous of her. But Basilisks sort of can't help being very dangerous indeed."

"Well, Harry, your way of finding out when she is travelling around the castle is a good place to start," Dumbledore told him. "And it occurs to me that a Patronus cannot be killed, so that would be one way to approach Empress without getting into danger. But then you could not hear her reply."

"I _could_ have the mirror on, but it might wake up Nora," Harry added, thinking about that. "And it'd be a really awkward way of talking, anyway."

Dumbledore stroked his beard.

"Indeed," he said, softly. "Indeed."

They reached the ground floor, and turned to pass through the Great Hall – still lit by hundreds of floating candles, even at near midnight.

"Perhaps using a mirror would be the best way to do things, though," he added, slowing to a halt by the high table – not far from the door to the dungeons. "I don't suppose you have another pair on you, by any chance?"

"I've got two mirrors," Harry answered, rummaging in his robes to fetch them out – one new and immaculate, the other slightly scratched. "There's one where the other end is in Nora's room, and one where the other end is with Sirius."

"Ah, I believe I have the beginnings of a plan," Dumbledore said. "Do you mind terribly if I take that mirror of yours where the other end goes to Sirius?"

Harry had to think about that a bit.

The mirror had belonged to his father. But he had other things that had belonged to his father, like his invisibility cloak or the Marauder's Map. And the mirror was _his_, which was one of those things that tingled a dragon-y instinct…

"What's the plan?" he asked, instead of saying yes.

"Simply that it occurs to me that a Basilisk on the other end of a mirror is unlikely to be able to either bite someone or crush them," Dumbledore explained. "And I believe that if I send a message to Sirius by Patronus, we could have him paint over the other end of that pair of mirrors with some nice black paint – and that way you would also be safe from Empress' eyes."

He gave Harry a nod. "Then we would simply give you the blacked-out end of the mirror, have Fawkes give Empress the other one, send a message with your Patronus to explain the situation, and we would be able to have a nice chat."

Harry was really quite impressed. That sounded like it would be quite a safe way to start talking to one of the most dangerous types of magical creatures, and thinking about it it seemed that at no point would anyone who could actually _die_ be close enough to Empress to be in danger.

And, oddly enough – now he'd heard what Dumbledore intended – it seemed like it would be all right as far as his dragonish thoughts were concerned. He would still have one of the mirrors, after all, it would simply be a different one of the pair. And he was sure that Sirius would be able to get a new set of two-way mirrors, even if they weren't quite as full of history as the one he had shared with Harry's father.

"All right, Professor," he said, and slid the slightly scratched mirror across the high table.

"Excellent," Dumbledore pronounced, and raised his wand. _"Expecto Patronum."_

* * *

There were several little details that had to be sorted out, like making sure that Harry could send a message by Patronus _in Dragonish_ (or Parseltongue, or whatever the right word for it was). Normally just looking at a dragon changed his language automatically, but Ruth was different – probably because otherwise he couldn't send a message in _English_ using his Patronus – and Dumbledore eventually solved the problem by transfiguring a goblet from the high table into a marvellous golden dragon statue, one which curled up and went to sleep.

Then they had to work out what to _say_.

Finally, though, everything was ready. Fawkes was stood on one end of the High Table with one end of the mirror in his beak, Sirius had arrived with the other end of the mirror painted over with jet-black paint, and the Marauder's Map showed that Empress was still not far from Nora's room.

"Is everybody quite ready?" Dumbledore asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Sirius said, yawning. "I still can't believe we're about to talk to a _Basilisk_."

Harry nodded his readiness as well, and Dumbledore smiled.

"Goodness me," he pronounced. "I must confess I am not ready for what is about to happen; I am glad you are all so confident."

Harry giggled, then held up his wand and looked at the golden dragon statuette.

"_Expecto Patronum,"_ he said, wondering how that sounded to everyone else.

Ruth formed, circled, and waited expectantly for the message.

"Empress," Harry began, feeling a little flutter in his stomach. "Hello. My name is Harry Potter. A phoenix is about to drop an enchanted mirror behind you that we can use to talk to you safely."

He paused, but didn't send the spell off just yet. "You've been teaching Nora to speak, so… I'd like to talk."

That was it, and he sent Ruth on his way a moment later.

"How was that?" he asked.

"You're asking the wrong people," Sirius pointed out, as Fawkes took off. His red-and-gold feathers lit up like a bonfire, and he was briefly invisible behind a curtain of flame before the flame dissipated and nothing was left. "We couldn't understand what you said."

"Though I must confess I would dearly love to add Parsel to my repertoire," Dumbledore admitted. "Perhaps I shall have to ask Hagrid some time."

Fawkes returned in another flash of fire, and Harry picked up the blacked-out mirror on the table.

"Empress?" he said, then decided to try it in Greek. "Basilissa?"

"_How did you learn that name?"_ a soft, dry voice asked. _"Even Salazar's heir didn't know that name."_

"It was from a magical object my father made," Harry replied.

"…_I don't speak that language,"_ Empress protested. _"If it's English, it changes so quickly."_

"Sorry," Harry said, looking up at the statuette again and wondering if maybe they should put a dragon picture on the mirror. "Is this better?"

"_Yes,"_ Empress said, and this time Harry thought he heard relief. _"I… there are so many things I don't know about what's going on."_

"It was a bit of a surprise for us, as well," Harry told her. "We saw you on a magical map a week or so ago, but it took a while to work out a way to talk to you."

"_You already knew…?"_ Empress asked. _"Salazar said-"_

The sentence ended very suddenly.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked.

"This is weird," Sirius muttered, then yawned.

"_It's nothing,"_ Empress declared. _"Why do you want to talk?"_

"I partly want to say thank you," Harry told her. "You taught Nora to speak, didn't you?"

There was a pause of several seconds.

"_Yes,"_ Empress said eventually. _"I've been teaching her how to speak. I'm still not finished."_

"Then thank you for that," Harry began. "And… why?"

"_I… don't feel comfortable saying why,"_ the basilisk replied. _"Not yet. But it's not to harm her."_

"Would you mind terribly letting us know what you've been talking about, Harry?" Dumbledore asked. "I'm sure it's going well, but I might be able to give you some advice."

Harry let Empress know what he was doing, then translated the whole conversation as he remembered it.

"I'm glad there isn't a Wizengamot meeting tomorrow," Sirius observed. "And I'm not sure if I'm saying that because I might feel tired, or just generally overwhelmed… it's too late at night for this kind of thing."

"If you could reassure miss Empress that I personally bear no ill will towards her?" Dumbledore asked. "It seems only polite."

Harry relayed that, and there was a long hiss from the mirror. It wasn't any formed words, just a serpentine sigh.

"_That sounds like good news,"_ Empress said eventually.

"I wanted to ask," Harry added, remembering what he'd wondered about before. "Why did you kill Myrtle?"

That sounded bad when he said it, so he tried to explain. "We realized how Riddle did it, but there's some funny magic stuff as well-"

"_I had to!"_ Empress interrupted him. _"I had to… he ordered me to do it. And – I'd been doing my best to just _scare_ people. I was told to attack, and I attacked. But that time I was told to kill."_

Another long, serpentine hiss.

"_When I was young, my role was to defend Hogwarts from those who would destroy it. That was what Salazar said. But after hundreds of years, Hogwarts is still here… and I have come to see that he and his heirs wanted to destroy Muggle-borns for being different."_

Harry didn't say anything, and after a moment Empress spoke again. _"Maybe Salazar wasn't like that. I don't know any more, it was so long ago. But I just want to be free."_

"You _had_ to?" Harry asked. "You didn't have a choice?"

"_And now you know,"_ Empress said, sounding exhausted. Harry could hear scales slithering over stone, and looking over at the Map he could see she was moving – slowly – towards where she'd disappeared before. _"I kept _that_ secret well..."_

"But if you didn't have a choice," Harry began, then paused. "It was _his_ fault – not yours."

The slithering sound stopped.

"_I think I have a lot to think about,"_ Empress said, eventually. _"Should I take the mirror with me?"_

"If you want," Harry told her, then realized something. "Is that why you were teaching Nora how to speak?"

"_It is one of the reasons,"_ Empress answered. _"Not the only one."_

Harry didn't think of anything else to say, apart from translating the second half of the conversation for Dumbledore and Sirius. Empress vanished off the Marauder's Map again, but the slithering sounds kept coming from the mirror for another few minutes until they receded – as if Empress was moving into the distance.

"I wonder whether Empress has been on the staff list for the last thousand years," Dumbledore said. "If she has, I'm slightly worried about the amount of back pay I may owe her."

* * *

AN:

* * *

And there we go.

This was something I sort of treated as a puzzle from Harry's point of view, putting together the abilities available to create a solution.


	48. Mysteries Don't Cancel Exams

It seemed strange, the next morning, when the sun was up and Harry was doing Arithmancy homework. The maths calculations in a brightly lit common room didn't seem to belong in the same place as a midnight conversation with an ancient basilisk.

Dumbledore had thanked Harry and Sirius for all their help, and told them both – mostly Sirius – that this was the sort of thing that should be kept quiet, just in case Tom Riddle worked out that his Horcruxes might be in danger (or at least discovered) if someone was talking with Empress. Harry had to admit that that was a very good reason, but it also made him sort of sad because it meant Empress wouldn't be able to actually meet with anyone for a very long time.

Even teaching her to understand English would take years of time, and the only people who could really do it were him and Hagrid.

Harry did his best to put her out of his mind at least while he did his school work, and that sort of worked – he got through his Arithmancy, breaking down numbers into prime factors and then sorting them according to which ones had what numerical importance – but once that was done the whole problem just sort of came back again.

Then Harry realized that Empress had been down there for a very long time without anything to read.

In a funny sort of way, that was almost worse to Harry. Not that it was something that he thought was worse – he liked books, but being without books wasn't worse than being unable to talk to someone for hundreds of years (let alone being forced to kill someone!) but because it was something small enough that he could actually think about it properly.

It happened that Harry had quite recently reached the point where he'd read everything that looked interesting in the entire Ravenclaw Library, so it was on his mind as well, and that evening (after dinner and some more homework, but before it was time for curfew) Harry took the blacked-out mirror and Dean's animated dragon picture out of the common room and into one of the disused classrooms.

Propping the picture up, Harry raised his wand and cast a Patronus.

"Empress," he began, as Ruth hovered in front of him. "I don't know how you feel, but I thought you might want someone to talk to, or… something."

He paused, thinking he really should have worked out what to say before sending the message, then continued. "I'll try to be on the other end of the mirror for an hour or so before midnight. You just say Harry to turn it on."

Harry almost offered to read her one of his books, as well, but decided that that was something they could decide on if Empress actually wanted to talk.

So he sent Ruth off to deliver his message, waited a few minutes to see if the mirror would start hissing straight away, and went back to the common room.

All this trying-to-solve-mysteries was very tiring, and he had Transfiguration to do.

* * *

Empress didn't ask for a talk, that night, though Harry did notice that she went back to her place near Nora's room for an hour or so around midnight.

It seemed as if nothing had happened last night… or as if Empress was trying to pretend nothing had happened last night.

Harry could sort of understand that, and he didn't want to force her, so instead once his Transfiguration was done (revision from second-year, which Neville enjoyed because his new wand meant he could actually _cast_ most of the spells without really having to force it) he started writing a letter to Charlie Weasley.

Harry wasn't sure if he'd actually be able to send it, and he was going to ask Professor Dumbledore to give it a read to check if there was anything it that shouldn't be there, but it seemed like something he should at least write down for research reasons. It was about how it seemed like there hadn't been anything special about Nora or really about growing up in a magical place that had led to Nora being able to talk, but that it was specifically something about Hogwarts that had meant Nora had learned to speak Dragonish – and that maybe they should do an experiment with another dragon hatchling to see if they would learn the same way as Nora if they were raised at Hogwarts as well.

The idea of Hogwarts becoming a sort of weyr was one that really pleased Harry, though he did know that the castle was a lot smaller than Benden Weyr and there wouldn't really be enough room for even the barely-ticking-over two hundred dragons Benden had at the start of _Dragonflight_.

Maybe it could be a dragon school, though? Depending on how long Nora took to finish learning Dragonish, or Parseltongue (though Harry preferred 'Dragonish', personally, even though he knew the truth) maybe dragons from reserves all over Europe could be sent here to learn how to speak, and once there were enough of them those dragons could start teaching dragons in other reserves?

That would probably mean Hagrid spending a lot of his time teaching dragons how to understand English (even if they couldn't speak it) – and maybe teaching humans how to speak Dragonish as well – but that sounded like just the sort of thing that Hagrid would love to do.

Realizing he was a bit distracted, Harry went back and read over the letter to make sure he hadn't missed anything out or put in anything that should have gone later. It looked fine, and after a bit of thought he added a little bit about how Muggles used some tests to tell if animals were smart or not. One of them he'd read about was a test with a mirror, to see if the animal could recognize that the reflection was just them instead of a different animal, and he asked if Charlie could please try that test on one of the dragons at the Romanian reserve.

Nora had passed, and Harry was sort of wondering if that was normal or not.

* * *

One of the unusual properties of school holidays, Harry had found – especially the ones at Hogwarts – was that the end of them could creep up on you and take you by surprise.

Suddenly his schedule was full again, not just of classwork and homework but of revision as well, and Hermione had done some Arithmancy to work out a revision timetable for all of them so that they were working on the same things at the same time.

"So there's something I don't get about this," Ron said, looking at his one. "How come there's no times and stuff on here? It's just… an order of things, and some of the boxes say that one of us isn't needed."

"That's because I don't know how long homework will take, or when you'll be doing Quidditch," Hermione explained, tapping her copy. "_Xerographia._"

A third copy of the revision timetable appeared, and she gave it to Harry to look at. "So we all have one, and we check off the bits we've done when we've done them. If only some of us are around, we do one of the bits that doesn't need the people who aren't there."

She shrugged. "Obviously if Harry, Neville and Ron are all doing their dungeons and dragons thing then it'll have to be Divination, but that's a price worth paying."

"Why are you still doing Divination, anyway?" Dean asked. "I've been finding it kind of a laugh, but you clearly don't enjoy it."

"There might be something worthwhile in there," Hermione defended herself. "Somewhere. And it _is_ fun watching when I bring up Muggle books."

Dean sniggered. "Yeah, that is a good point."

"I don't think we heard about this," Neville said.

"Oh, this was pretty fun," Dean explained. "Hermione got so annoyed about how divination was kind of vague that she started bringing up examples from Muggle fantasy books whenever we got onto a new topic. And they're always way easier to understand than the actual stuff we do in class."

"I'm just trying to make a point," Hermione said, but she was smiling. "When Boromir gets a prophecy dream, it tells him exactly where to go and even what's going to happen and who's going to do it. When Professor Trelawney makes a prediction, it's more like 'Something bad is going to happen next week' and _anything_ could count."

Dean waved his hands. "Hey, I'm not disagreeing. I mean, I haven't died yet and she's predicted that hundreds of times."

He frowned. "Though, speaking of Boromir, isn't he the first one to die? I wonder if he's meant to be black?"

"I _think_ it says he has a fair face," Harry contributed. "But I can't remember for sure. If it does say that then it only says it once."

His friend shrugged. "Whatever. Anyway, what are we going to do first?"

Hermione duplicated the last timetable, and pointed to the top left corner. "We're all here, so let's start with that one. Potions."

"Potions again," Ron grumbled. "It's following me."

"Be fair," Neville said. "Potions _have_ been helpful to us."

He demonstrated by turning into a panther.

"...you know, I just thought of a fun joke for the train next year," Ron said. "All of us, and Fred and George, in the same compartment, and leave the door open. Any firsties going down the train are going to look in and think they're in the animal compartment."

"That sounds like a great idea!" said one of the twins, making Ron jump.

"Where did you come from?"

"Same place as you, Nutkin," the other one said – Harry took a quick sniff and confirmed that that one was George – and clapped Ron on the shoulder. "We'll make a prankster out of you yet."

"Why would we do that?" Fred asked. "We'd have competition."

"We have competition," George countered. "Besides, if we become his mentor we'd have all sorts of chances to sabotage him."

"You idiots do realize I can hear you, right?" Ron asked, shrugging George's hand off his shoulder.

"He can hear us!" Fred gasped. "The cure must have worked!"

"What _are _you blathering on about?" Ron said, glancing at his friends. Harry shrugged, and none of the others seemed to have any idea either.

"Didn't you hear?" George asked, then looked suddenly apologetic. "Oh, sorry, I should have realized. That was very insensitive of me."

"Prats," Ron muttered. "Okay, now I feel like I'm ready for some potions revision."

He picked up his quill, which folded itself into a circle. "...oh, what now?"

"Oddly, that wasn't one of ours," George said.

"It very much _was_ one of ours," Fred corrected him. "That's the prototype."

"Oh, the prototype," George nodded. "I remember now."

"Shouldn't you two be revising?" Hermione asked. "You've got OWLs in a few months."

"OWLs are easy," Fred shrugged. "Just tell them where to deliver the letter and it gets there just fine."

After a moment's thought, Hermione took her wand out of her pocket.

"Percy?" she asked. "Would I get in trouble for hexing someone in the Common Room?"

"You certainly would!" Percy replied, sounding shocked, then looked up from his History of Magic textbook. "Oh, it's them. Go ahead."

"I think we should retreat, Fred," Fred said.

"Agreed, Fred," George agreed.

Both twins promptly shifted into their Animagus forms and scampered across the common room, and Hermione lowered her wand with a huff.

"Potions," she said.

"I'm not going to argue," Dean said quietly.

Then he looked over at Neville. "Um… mate, are you going to stay as a panther?"

Neville gave a feline shrug.

"We should do the Confusing Concoction," Hermione suggested. "It's one of the tricky ones because you have to get it to thicken, and that means preparing the lovage correctly."

"Why that one in particular?" Ron asked.

"Well, it _is_ only a guess, but I think we might have it on the exam," Hermione answered. "You remember how we had the Forgetfulness Potion in first year? And then the Memory Potion in second year? It seems like a bit of a pattern to me."

"Would Professor Snape include a clue like that in his exams?" Harry frowned. "It seems more like the sort of thing you'd get in a Redwall book, except with a bit less magic."

He paused. "Actually, have you mentioned the Redwall books for examples of divination?"

"No, but I'm going to try if we ever do finding clues in old books," Hermione promised. "And he might. It's a very Slytherin thing to do, leaving a clue which you have to be sneaky to think of."

"But it'd also be a really Slytherin thing to do to set up that pattern and then _break_ it," Ron said gloomily. "So we'll have to revise everything anyway."

"At least we've got a timetable for it," Dean pointed out. "Don't you agree, Neville?"

Neville did his best to do a pantherine meow.

* * *

Because it was into the season for the exams, Harry did one last session of the Dungeons and Dragons campaign so they would finish at a good point and they could pick up again after the exams were over. It seemed like the best way to do things, especially because the way the terms were arranged at Hogwarts that meant they could do a few sessions before heading off home for the summer holidays.

It wasn't really something he'd planned out ahead of time, but it so happened that that final session was about going and clearing out an old Elven village that had been taken over by Orcs. It had been set up to be a hard fight, but at the last minute Harry decided to have some of the Orcs so impressed by the group that they just panicked and ran away.

That still meant there was fighting to do, especially with the troll, and by the time the fight was over they were right near the end of the session. Ron's squirrel had a few major injuries and had to drink a whole healing potion – which wasn't much smaller than he was – and everyone else had at least a few scrapes which James' cleric had to heal, but it was then that Harry mentioned the final thing in the village.

"Hold on, go back a bit," Neville requested. "Can you say that bit again?"

Harry read off from his notes again. "There's an Elven boat in the dock, with silver sails and lanterns and a swan prow."

"Isn't that how Eärendil's boat was described?" Neville asked. "Hold on, um… what do I roll to find out?"

"Seamanship, Poetry or, um – or history, that's the other one," Harry replied.

Neville rolled a die, and Harry peered at it for a moment before deciding it was good enough.

"It doesn't quite look like how Eärendil's boat is supposed to look," he answered. "It looks similar, but not quite the same, and it says this on the side."

It was a bit hard to pronounce _Rhofel sûl_, but Harry did his best attempt as he held up the paper he'd written it on.

"What does that mean if you translate it from Elvish?" Tanisis asked.

Harry answered that it meant Wind's Feather, or close enough, and the last twenty minutes or so of the session – before they had to stop because it was nearly curfew – were taken up by poking around the boat and seeing if it was in good shape.

Right at the last minute, Harry said that when Colin took the ship's tiller the whole thing shivered and rose about a foot into the air.

"Wait, it did what?" Colin asked.

"We don't have any time," Harry apologized.

"You can't leave it at that!" Su groaned. "We'll be waiting for months to find out that means!"

Harry shrugged his wings, and started packing up his notes.

"That _is_ a horrible trick, mate," Ron accused him.

It was, a bit, but Harry thought it was worth it.

* * *

Late one night, not long before midnight, Harry watched the Marauder's Map as Empress lay outside Nora's room.

He'd given the other side of Nora's mirror back to Hagrid, so he didn't know what Empress was saying, but if he had to guess he'd say it was probably more language lessons. Harry wasn't really clear on whether her reason for it was the same as the reason for it she'd started with, but she was still doing it and Harry was grateful for it.

He was just starting on a book called _Five Hundred Years After_, one of the same ones by the person who'd written the Dragaera books and set in the same world but a long time _before_ the main books – which was sort of funny when you thought about it – when Empress moved from her place by Nora's room and disappeared off the map.

A minute or so later, he heard a whisper from the blacked-out mirror in his pocket. _"Harry."_

"Good evening, Empress," he said, remembering to keep his focus on the front cover of his copy of _Dragonflight_ while he spoke. "Are you all right?"

"_I think so,"_ Empress replied.

There was a long silence, which Harry didn't try to fill.

"_It has been a long time since I was able to have a conversation,"_ Empress said, eventually. _"And most of the humans I spoke to were…"_

Another sigh. _"I apologize. I have been thinking about your offer since you made it, and I thought I should at least try."_

"I could read you a story," Harry suggested. "I've got a lot of them, but I might need to go a bit slowly so I can translate it properly."

After a moment's thought, the dragon decided he should clarify. "Oh, I'm not sure if you know what sort of story I mean."

"_A story, a tale… these words all mean the same thing,"_ Empress said. _"Even the words sound the same."_

They didn't to Harry, but maybe that was just another thing about Dragonish.

"What I mean is, I've read somewhere that the novel wasn't invented until hundreds of years after Hogwarts was founded, and fantasy novels are sort of new," Harry went on.

"_A… novel,"_ Empress repeated. _"What a curious word. It is almost 'story', but I have never quite heard 'novel' before."_

There was a slight slithering sound. _"What is a novel?"_

"A novel is… usually it means a story which is made up to be a story," Harry said, realizing as he did that he wasn't entirely sure of the definition himself. "Some novels are based on real events, but most aren't. Some of them aren't even set in a real place."

He slid _Five Hundred Years Later_ away across the table, and got another book out – one he'd had ready just in case. "I can only _speak_ snake language when I'm looking at a dragon or a picture of a dragon, so it might be a bit awkward for me to read this, but… shall we give it a go?"

"_You have made me curious,"_ Empress said. _"I believe I will be interested in hearing what a novel is like."_

"All right," Harry said, leafing through to find the front page. "If any of this doesn't make sense, just ask me."

He took a deep breath.

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

"_A hobbit?"_ Empress repeated.

Harry confirmed that that was the word he had used.

There was a long silence after that.

"_Well. At least a hole in the ground is a sensible place to live."_

Harry smiled, and kept going. "Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell…"

* * *

It was a little bit awkward to keep his newest extra bit of routine going properly as they progressed rapidly towards the exams, but Harry had always been okay with getting only about six hours of sleep – and so he was able to stay up a bit past midnight every day and still get up at the same time as everyone else (if not earlier).

Usually that midnight hour was spent reading, with only occasional questions by Empress, but sometimes she asked a bit about what had happened over the last thousand years. Harry was sort of surprised to find that she _did_ know about the Norman Conquest but hadn't heard of the Muggle Parliament, or at least when Harry described it she asked if he was talking about something the Normans had got rid of.

Harry had had to look that one up and check whether it was the same thing.

She'd also never heard of the rules about the difference between Beings and Beasts, and after talking to her about it Harry had to admit that it certainly _sounded_ like she could be classified as a Being. There was a language problem, but since Hagrid already spoke Parseltongue then it didn't seem impossible – and hadn't Merpeople _chosen_ to be Beasts, instead of being classified as Beasts because of their language problems?

(Harry wondered if maybe Parseltongue, or Dragonish, would be a good language to teach _everyone_ if it was a magical language that everyone could understand like their own language.)

The only real problem was how to make it so Empress could interact with everyone, but that was such a big problem that it was really several problems mixed together. Not only was there the danger of Empress accidentally killing lots of people, but there was the problem of making people _okay_ with talking to a giant snake that everyone thought would kill you (accidentally or deliberately) and also the little side problem about how – with his Horcruxes still intact, and most of them hidden away – Tom Riddle might come _back_, and if Empress was in the newspapers he'd obviously know that something was a bit wrong.

Those problems all together gave Harry quite a puzzle to think about, just as much of one as trying to contact Empress had originally been, and he had to take care not to get distracted thinking about it during lessons (Professor Snape's Potions lessons were getting more and more advanced, for example) or during revision (because even Professor Kettleburn would be unimpressed if Harry's answer on an exam paper was something about how a basilisk losing her eyes would make her safer to be around, but would also be really icky.)

It was sort of a pity that exams were still going to happen, so Harry couldn't focus all his attention on the problem, but exams _were_ important (as Hermione was happy to remind them all) and so it was probably for the best overall.

* * *

Perhaps Harry was more distracted than he'd realized, because when he came downstairs one morning and everyone in the common room was talking about Quidditch it took him a moment to remember what was going on.

"Hufflepuff are our main rivals for the cup this year," Oliver was saying, with the other Quidditch team members crowded in a semicircle around him and what looked like half the house crowded around _them_ – including Ron, naturally. "They've got a good team, and a good Chaser squad. If someone catches the Snitch quickly then whoever that is wins the cup – but Hufflepuff are up sixty, so if they get enough goals we might end up having to wait to catch the Snitch."

Colin raised his hand.

"Yes, Colin?" Oliver asked.

"Isn't that mostly something for Ginny to think about?" he asked.

"It's something for everybody to think about," Oliver countered. "There's tactics involved. If one team is going to win no matter who catches the Snitch, then their Beaters need to start looking for the Snitch as well – it doesn't matter if someone from the other team spots it at that point – and the Beaters on the other team have more freedom to do what they want."

"Couldn't we just ask Harry?" Fred suggested. "He's bound to know."

"I don't think spectators are allowed to help," Katie replied.

"She's right, unfortunately," Oliver said. "Arguably it's best if Harry doesn't watch at all, but so long as he doesn't stare at the Snitch all the time it's probably all right."

He checked his watch. "All right, we'd better get going."

"Mate, it's two hours until we kick off," Ron pointed out.

"That just means we'll get a good idea of the conditions," Oliver replied.

"We haven't had breakfast yet," Alicia protested.

"All right, fine," Oliver allowed. "Breakfast, _then_ Quidditch pitch."

Harry watched them go, then stretched.

"All right?" Dean asked.

"Mostly surprised," Harry admitted. "I'd forgotten the Quidditch final was today."

He paused, frowning. "Is it me or is it always us in the final?"

"I think we're always in the last game," Neville said. "And because of the way the scoring works, the teams in the last game always have a chance of winning the cup."

He glanced at Hermione. "That's right, right?"

"Yes, because no matter who's on top of the league table the winning team _could_ get enough points to go past them," Hermione confirmed.

"That sort of thing can make League games in football a bit awkward," Dean contributed. "But then again, they play all the last league games of the season at the same time so nobody can know stuff they shouldn't."

He sniggered. "I remember hearing about one game where the teams _did_ know that sort of thing, and they knew that if they got a draw then both of them would go through."

"So, hold on," Neville said, raising a hand. "So in football you… have a set length for the match… and then you have penalties?"

"You have a penalty shootout and stuff in games you know someone has to win," Dean clarified. "Like an FA Cup game. But in a League game you just play until the end of the time and if it's a draw it's a draw… so they just kind of kicked the ball around in the middle of the pitch for an hour and a half. Everyone got really angry."

"Can you _imagine_ trying to have a draw in modern Quidditch?" Neville asked. "You'd have to play for three months. Or eat the Snitch _and_ have that ruled as not catching it."

"Oh, what subject are we going to talk about during the game?" Harry asked. "If Hermione wants us to do revision, I mean."

"You could do Creatures," Neville suggested. "That's one that you three are doing, _and_ it's sort of relevant to Defence Against the Dark Arts."

* * *

The weather was perfect for Quidditch, with scattered high clouds and not much wind and air that was crystal clear.

"And… we've got down here at eleven o'clock," Hermione said to herself, looking at her watch. "Good."

Harry thought that was probably because Hermione was Timing It, or going to Time It, but didn't say anything because it wasn't really all that important.

He did sort of wonder what would happen if the game kept going until exam time, though.

"What does it count as if one side scores fifteen more goals and the other gets the Snitch?" Dean asked, as they took their seats. "I can't remember if there's a rule about that."

"Whoever gets the Snitch counts as winning if it's a cup game," Neville told him. "If it's a League game… well, I _think_ it might actually count as a draw, but it's not happened in ages."

"Of course it hasn't," Blaise said, sitting down on Harry's other side without bothering to ask. "Either one of the Seekers is good enough to catch the Snitch early on, before one side has had the chance to get a fifteen goal lead, or the game is long enough that the time when there _is_ a fifteen goal lead is very short. It's simple if you think about it."

"We're sitting in the Gryffindor section?" Daphne asked him, surprised.

"No, they're sitting in the Slytherin section," Tracey replied. "You watch, that's exactly the argument he'll make..."

"Absolutely not," Blaise countered. "Why would I say that?"

"What _is_ the reason, then?" Dean said.

"Well, it's simple," Blaise shrugged. "Why are there even areas for certain Houses to sit?"

"Moral support?" Neville suggested. "Or to stop fights breaking out, especially in the Lion-Snake games."

"Exactly," Blaise agreed. "And in neither case is it relevant to this match. I can sit wherever I like."

"...whatever," Daphne said. "Anybody want some sweets? They're mostly leftovers from last time I went to Hogsmeade."

Harry had a look, and asked if anyone else wanted any Cockroach Clusters. Nobody did, so he fished all of them out and had a nice little pile to work with.

Then he got all the wrappers, as well.

"It's still really weird to watch you eat that stuff," Neville confided. "It's been years and I'm still not used to how you can just… eat wrappers like that."

"They're not my favourite, but they've got a nice crunchy texture," Harry explained. "And if I do this..."

He concentrated, and carefully exhaled just a bit of fire. Smoke came out of his nose, and he licked the gooey melted wrappers up before swallowing them.

"It's a bit like cheese, but tasting more of petrol," he finished.

"I was going to say that Muggles think the fumes from plastic are unhealthy," Hermione said. "But I don't think that really applies for you."

* * *

The kickoff came a few minutes later, all fourteen players pushing off from the ground at once, and the Hufflepuff team's Chasers immediately went on the attack.

Harry could tell that Cedric had really worked hard on making his team work together – just as hard as Oliver had – and before long the Quaffle was bouncing back and forth between the two Chaser teams and goals were racking up in a steady stream.

It looked to Harry like one of the big differences between the teams was what role each of the captains played. On the one paw, Cedric could fly up high to both look for the Snitch and keep an eye on how the team was doing, so he could get a view of the whole game and point out things to do, but on the other paw Oliver would have to be watching the players _anyway_ as the Keeper and so he was doing his job – while Cedric inevitably had to focus on something that wasn't looking for the Snitch.

On the third paw (which was a dragonish saying that humans didn't really have, or that was what Harry had decided) it wasn't like either of the other two possible posts for a captain would be ideal either. Maybe the best thing for the captain to be doing was standing on the pitch shouting instructions?

Or maybe just sending Patronuses up with instructions. Harry was _fairly_ sure that casting spells and stuff would break the rules if you were a player, unless the spell didn't interfere with the game, but if you were a spectator?

He'd probably have to check _Quidditch Through The Ages_ to be sure.

* * *

Half an hour into the game, and with Hufflepuff having clawed out a thirty-point advantage with both sides at around two hundred points, Harry finished the last of his Cockroach Clusters.

"I've never really grasped why someone came up with that," Neville said, watching as Harry licked the bits off his talons. "I get why you might like it, but… everyone else?"

"Apparently in other countries they like insects," Dean suggested.

"It's an acquired taste," Blaise informed them. "One I've never been interested in acquiring in the first place."

"But couldn't you say that about most tastes?" Daphne frowned. "Apart from, you know. Chocolate. And bacon."

"I just tend to find most things tasty," Harry shrugged. "I'd have to think for a bit to come up with something that wasn't tasty the first time."

There was a loud _thwack_ from the direction of the game, and as they all looked up a groan came from the stands.

"Time out!" Cedric bellowed, and Harry looked from player to player before spotting that Oliver was having trouble holding on to his broom.

Professor Dumbledore cast something from where he was spectating, and the Bludgers stopped moving entirely for long enough for the two Hufflepuff Beaters to grab them and wrestle them to the ground. Fred and George were too busy flying over to help Oliver, and after some careful work they lowered the Gryffindor Keeper to the ground.

"What happened?" Neville asked. "I can't see very well."

"I think Oliver took a Bludger somewhere he shouldn't have," Harry said, taking his glasses off in case the difference would let him see just a bit better. "There's Madam Pomfrey."

The School Nurse hurried over to Oliver, passing her wand over him a few times, then said something that Harry couldn't make out – he'd never learned to lip read and she was halfway across the stadium.

"_It looks like Oliver Wood's been injured,"_ Lee's commentary said. _"I'm just being told now by Professor McGonagall that it looks like he'll need to miss the rest of the match."_

"That's not good," Blaise commented. "It'd be a dreadful shame if Hufflepuff won the Quidditch Cup, you know."

"Why's that?" Dean asked. "Didn't they win it in our first year?"

"Well, _yes_," Blaise agreed. "That's why it'd be dreadful. Being beaten by Gryffindor is one thing, but being beaten by _Hufflepuff..."_

"Technically," Hermione began. "I think that no matter who wins this game _both_ Hufflepuff and Gryffindor will have beaten Slytherin in the Quidditch Cup."

"Stop using logic, Granger," Daphne declared grandly. "That's a Ravenclaw thing."

"I like Ravenclaws," Harry said, then frowned. "Are you sure logic is a Ravenclaw thing?"

"Ron's going up," Neville told them, and Harry realized Neville was the only one still actually paying attention to the pitch.

True to what he'd said, Ron was hovering up to take his place in front of the goal hoops. He looked a bit nervous, but one of the twins said something to him and that seemed to help.

Madam Hooch blew her whistle, and one of the Hufflepuff Chasers restarted the game. The Quaffle went from him to one of his teammates, then Katie took it, and she had to duck away from a Bludger and Hufflepuff regained possession.

The Hufflepuff Chaser wove left to get past Alicia and break free from the Gryffindor team, then went hurtling towards the Gryffindor goals, and Harry held his breath.

Ron wobbled slightly in the air, trying to cover all three goal hoops. The Chaser went up slightly, so Ron reacted by climbing as well, and then the Chaser completely switched tactics and dove.

Ron dove as well, then rolled his broom. He slid off it almost completely, only holding on by his widely separated hands, and the unexpected appearance of a boot at about eye level made Hufflepuff's Chaser flinch. Her shot went wide, bouncing on the rim of the goal hoop instead of going in, and there was a slightly baffled cheer from most of the Gryffindors in the stands.

"...is he mad?" Tracey asked. "I didn't really get that sense from him."

"He _is_ a squirrel some of the time," Dean said critically. "So who knows, really."

A moment after Dean had said that, Ron decided that trying to climb back onto his broom like this was too difficult. Instead he did something slightly complicated involving shoving his hands downwards, momentarily shifted to Nutkin, and when he was back in human form he was solidly back on the broom and flying down to grab the ball before it hit the ground.

"Angelina!" he called, loudly enough to hear in the stands, and threw it to the nearest Gryffindor Chaser.

"He might be mad, though," Harry added his own opinion. "I'm mad. You're mad."

"Mad?" Hermione asked. "I'm not mad."

"You must be," Harry shrugged. "Or you wouldn't have come here."

Hermione giggled, and Harry had to snigger as well.

"Was that some kind of Muggle joke?" Blaise said.

"I'll have to lend you _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_," Harry decided. "Actually, I'm not sure what someone who grew up a Wizard would think of it."

Gryffindor scored a few seconds later, as Fred used one of the Bludgers to knock a wayward Quaffle into the goal hoop.

"That's just not croquet," Hermione managed, before giggling again.

"Don't you do that with flamingos?" Dean asked. "I have seen the film."

* * *

Despite his spectacular first save, Ron didn't manage to keep a clean sheet – if that was a Quidditch term and not just a football term, that was. Sometimes he was able to do really good acrobatic saves, saves which had Harry wincing a bit, but when he was in a simpler situation he sometimes got a bit flustered and let the Quaffle through.

It was enough to keep the scores roughly level, though, and the game went on for almost another hour before finally both Seekers spotted the Snitch at the same moment.

Cedric went for it as hard as he could, and so did Ginny, and the Snitch seemed to notice them coming and dropped towards the grass.

Harry leaned forwards in his seat to watch more closely. He saw out of the corner of his eye that someone had dropped the Quaffle, but more important was that Ginny was coming from further away but moving faster – her broom was better and she was crouched low over the handle-

-then they both reached the golden spark at the same moment, and there was a tremendous crash which ended with both Seekers sprawled on the ground.

"What happened?" Dean demanded. "I can't see! Who's got the Snitch!"

Harry couldn't see the Snitch either. Neither Ginny nor Cedric had anything in their hands as they rolled upright, and the rest of the teams were descending to see if they were all right – apart from the Beaters, who were doing their usual duty of corralling the Bludgers – and it didn't look like anyone was choking, either.

A moment later, squinting, Harry spotted a little spark of gold on the grass.

And another about two feet away.

And more…

"Well?" Neville said. "Did Ginny get it, or did Cedric?"

"I don't think _anyone_ got it," Harry replied.

"...is that even an option?" Daphne frowned.

"_What, really?"_ Lee Jordan asked, his startled voice booming out over the crowd. _"Er, sorry about that, everyone – I've just been told that the Snitch got smashed into a thousand pieces between two broom handles. Neither Seeker got it."_

He went on, puzzled and slightly quieter. _"Is that the end of the game? It's not like anyone can catch the Snitch now… it's exploded! How do you catch something that's exploded?"_

"Oh!" Hermione gasped. "I just realized something!"

"Do go on," Blaise invited.

"Well – I think this is something the rulebook doesn't cover," Hermione explained. "So _that_ means that there's going to be a new edition of _Quidditch Through The Ages_, and a new rulebook, and Cedric and Ginny are going to be in it."

"_Okay, I've been told that it's going to be considered a draw for the Snitch,"_ Lee announced. _"So neither Seeker gets any points. That means..."_

He paused. _"Oh! Um, it's a draw? I think? I'm not used to there not being any points for the Snitch..."_

"So _that's_ how you get a draw," Dean said, then stood up and started applauding.

Harry decided he should do the same, and it spread from there in a kind of hesitant fits-and-starts sort of way until almost everyone was clapping.

It _had_ been a good game, he had to admit.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Moving steadily on through third year.

So once you know there's a thousand year old basilisk living in the basement… does it really change everything? It changes some things, but… she's been there for a thousand years, after all.


	49. Exams Don't Cancel Mysteries Either

It seemed like only a few days after the Quidditch match – and Ron's unexpected elevation to the main team, which had meant he'd been part of a cup winning team which by one point of view had _four_ Weasleys on it – that the exams were suddenly not something that was coming but something that was happening _tomorrow morning_.

"I hope I'm ready," Hermione fretted, checking her exam timetable. "This is going to be such a pain..."

Harry had a look, and blinked.

"Wow."

"What's that?" Ron asked, leaning around to see himself. "Blimey, they're really not ready for anyone to be bloody minded enough to do all twelve subjects, are they?"

Harry counted under his breath. "Hermione, even if you can use your time turner for this you're going to be doing twelve hours of exams in one day."

"Twelve what?" Neville repeated, startled.

"Oh, fine, you have a look as well," Hermione advised them, and turned it around.

Neville picked it up, compared it to his own exam timetable, and frowned. "Hermione, you've got Arithmancy and Transfiguration at the same time tomorrow morning. _I've_ got those subjects… how does that make any sense? How are they going to have you do the Arithmancy paper without you being able to tell me what the questions are?"

"I wouldn't do that!" Hermione replied, shocked.

"You've got to admit it's possible _someone_ would, though," Ron pointed out. "Like, if… this is going to sound unlikely, but if Crabbe was doing all the subjects then he could tell Malfoy what's in some of them."

"I think Vincent _could_ be doing all twelve subjects, come to think of it," Harry mused. "I don't think you have to do _well_ at all of them to be allowed to take all of them."

He shrugged a wing. "I mean, he's _not_, but he could be."

"Would that be treated as being really Slytherin?" Dean asked. "And would that earn you more points or have them taken off?"

"Sadly, Professor McGonagall doesn't think that being particularly like your House is a good reason to get points, let alone exam marks," George volunteered. "That's a lesson my esteemed twin and I have learned well."

"Shouldn't you two be revising for your OWLs?" Hermione asked, taking her timetable back. "They're the most important exams you can take."

"Well, we already know what we're going to do once we leave school," George told her, scribbling something on a piece of parchment. "We've already got Padfoot interested in funding us."

Hermione paused, then turned back to her friends. "Should I be impressed they already have jobs lined up or annoyed that they're using it as a reason not to do well on their exams?"

"I think it's a joke shop," Harry opined. "Sirius mentioned that once."

"We're actually quite good at magic, you know," Fred noted. "We just don't test well."

"I do," Lee Jordan commented, shuffling what looked to Harry like History Of Magic notes.

"We're hoping there's an extra credit bit on the Transfiguration OWL," George agreed. "Hey, Harry, look at this."

He lobbed something to Harry, who caught it and looked at it.

"It says it's a smoke bomb," he observed, reading it off, and turned it around until he found the little rope fuse leading out the top.

"Try it!" Fred urged. "It doesn't last long, and you'll all be fine."

"We're trying to get ready for our exams," Neville pointed out. "I'm still not sure I've got everything ready for the Transfiguration."

Harry thought about it, then blew a little spark on the fuse and rolled it towards the table Fred and George were at.

"Hey, wait-" George yelped, before the bomb went off.

There was a sudden _whoosh_ of thick white smoke, which lasted four seconds, and when it faded all three Fifth-Years at the table had extravagant wooden pipes clenched in their teeth.

Fred took the stem of his pipe out of his mouth. "We've tried it already, you know," he said, gesturing with the pipe, then blew a smoke square. "Mmm, this one's peppermint."

"Orange for me," George supplied, and pinched his nose and blew hard. Long curling spirals of smoke rose from his ears towards the ceiling.

Lee Jordan took a deep pull on his own pipe, and produced a figure-of-eight out of smoke before putting the pipe down on the table next to them. "After two years of dealing with those Slytherins, you'd think you two would be a bit more ready for that sort of thing."

"Expecting it with Slytherins is one thing," Fred grumbled, smoke oozing from his nostrils and forming a neat grid pattern. "But from fellow Gryffindors? It's just not cricket."

"You don't _play_ cricket," Dean pointed out. "You'd probably be good at it, though."

"Transfiguration!" Hermione insisted. "And Arithmancy, and – do you have Charms or Runes tomorrow afternoon?"

"Charms," Ron answered, checking his own timetable. "I really think they could organize the exams here better."

"Maybe they do two versions of the elective papers?" Harry asked. "That seems like it would be the simpler option."

"That _does_ make more sense," Ron admitted. "But doesn't that mean it doesn't matter if Hermione tells us what's on her Runes paper?"

"It _might_ be cheating," Hermione judged. "Besides, I'll have my own exams to revise for."

"You're the one with the time machine," Neville pointed out. "Actually, what rules _do_ you have for that?"

Hermione ticked off on her fingers. "Only use it for school work. Don't tell everyone about it, as much as possible anyway. Make very sure you don't run into yourself. And… don't give it to Fred or George Weasley."

"Those do all sound pretty sensible to me," Ron said, to general agreement. "Except for how you're using a time machine to help with school work, anyway."

"Transfiguration!" Hermione repeated, louder this time. "What are Gamp's laws?"

"You can't Transfigure food unless it's for Harry," Dean answered promptly. "That's one of them."

Hermione opened her mouth to object, thought about it, and closed her mouth.

"That's one," she agreed instead.

* * *

Even though his own exams were important, Harry couldn't resist looking across the hall during the first of their written exams – Transfiguration – to see how people like Tanisis and the Barlos sisters were getting on with the new way of taking part in the exams.

It looked like they'd been allowed to use their typewriters, which was nice to know – it wouldn't have seemed fair otherwise – and Tanisis didn't look too upset. Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail were even talking to one another, though Harry couldn't hear a word of it and he wondered if they'd been put under some sort of charm to make sure they couldn't be heard by anyone else.

It seemed like the fairest thing to do, really. It was simply impossible for any of them to go anywhere without the others, and besides they were sort of all taking the exam, so in a way it was like they were being tested together on the theory bits. The practical was more the sort of thing you could test one at a time (or two at a time if it involved actual magic).

Satisfied with that, Harry focused all his attention on his own paper.

At least the bit about the Laws of Transfiguration was easy, and the bit about how they weren't all quite the _same_ sorts of laws was fairly easy too – you didn't have to explain _why_ they were different, just _how_ they were different. Like how you couldn't transfigure food or gold, but you could duplicate food if you had some of it already while duplicating gold simply couldn't be done without a Philosopher's Stone.

Harry did think it was a good thing he'd stayed interested in magic so long, though. It always seemed much easier to do an exam question if it was the sort of thing you were interested in, because then you were talking about something you liked.

* * *

After the Transfiguration paper came the Charms paper, and after that there was the theory bit of Defence Against the Dark Arts – which was all about all sorts of dangerous Dark Creatures which you could _theoretically_ run into (like Lethifolds) but which were too dangerous to actually demonstrate (like Lethifolds).

After revising about Lethifolds Harry was very glad indeed to have his Patronus mastered. They sounded like dreadful things, and the fact that most spells didn't get rid of them was really sort of scary. (And scary in a different way than most people were scared of dragons.)

Wondering about that, and resisting the urge to chew on his quill, Harry moved on from Lethifolds to the extravagantly dangerous Nundu.

Nundu were another of those Beasts which were 'at least it's not a Lethifold', as far as Harry was concerned. It sounded like it would be quite difficult for someone to vanish without trace because of a Nundu, because you'd be too busy running around in circles with the hundred or so other witches and wizards trying to make it go away.

As fast as possible.

* * *

Harry's three elective subjects were all new to him, naturally, and each one was different.

First was Arithmancy (which, like Runes and History of Magic, only had a theory paper), which was a bit like a Key Stage Two Maths paper at level 6 but with harder and more varied questions.

It actually did look a lot like Professor Vector had _used_ a Muggle maths paper as the starting point, because instead of a list of questions you had to write on labelled pieces of parchment there was a booklet with separate questions and places to fill in your answers. That meant there was a page of graph questions about translating, enlarging, rotating and reflecting a shape, and then there was a page about algebra where you had to work out what X was.

Harry kind of liked this way of doing things, though it did make him wonder how easy Tanisis would find it to actually write down the answers for these ones. That was sort of a problem with Arithmancy in general for her and the others who used typewriters, come to think of it, and it didn't seem fair that she might have to not do a subject because it would be harder to do without being able to write on paper.

You could do a nine on a typewriter, but doing long division was almost impossible – and graphs were right out.

In fact, it seemed like the same kind of problem might happen with Runes, once Harry was doing that exam instead. Runes used, well, runes (which weren't on any typewriter Harry had seen) and even their first exam was about decomposing and recomposing runic phrases. Most of the exam was spent either taking a short rune phrase and translating it into English, including some of the meanings of the runes, or taking an English phrase and translating it into runes.

That second one meant that you had to do at least two translations and explain one of the reasons one of them was better. It was probably a good way to show that they'd been learning the meanings of the runes, but by the end of it Harry was really hoping that they got to take a dictionary into the exams next year.

* * *

Care of Magical Creatures was the oddest of all.

There was no theory paper whatsoever, at least not in third year. Instead, they all gathered together by the shore of the Black Lake, and one by one Professor Kettleburn called them over behind a copse of trees to a hippogriff paddock.

For most of Harry's classmates, that meant first bowing to them, then giving them a pat, and for full marks even going for a fly. Not everyone did, and some of the ones who did sounded like they really regretted it – Lavender Brown had taken off in a cloud of shrieks before getting a bit more relaxed by the time she landed again – but there was one thing that Harry wondered all the way through the wait.

"Professor?" he asked, as it finally came to his turn. "Is it okay to ask why hippogriffs stay in the paddock?"

"It's not part of the exam, so I could certainly tell you!" Professor Kettleburn chuckled. "If I knew why, of course – it's a bit of a mystery. It's just how hippogriffs are kept, though there's two ideas about it."

Harry approached one of the hippogriffs – a big grey one with orange eyes – and stared at it, before bowing.

"The first idea," Professor Kettleburn went on, "is that it's just that that's where the food is, and they know that – sort of like professors, I might say! But the second idea is that hippogriffs were magically created from horses and eagles, and the first wizards who did it treated them like horses because that's where they came from – and found that they have a _very_ convenient tendency to stay in a paddock! Bit of a conundrum, isn't it?"

The grey hippogriff had bowed back while Professor Kettleburn was talking, and Harry approached to give him a pat.

"I won't be asking you to ride him, don't worry," the teacher added. "I don't think he'd take kindly to it, and it might be unfair to you!"

Since the alternative seemed sort of unfair on everyone else, Harry said he'd just go up for a fly with the hippogriff instead. That went mostly well, except for the bit where the hippogriff wasn't very good at following traffic laws and they nearly had a collision, and as Harry landed Professor Kettleburn gave him a nod.

"Fine work, Harry!" he said. "And what would you give him as a reward?"

Harry frowned for a moment. "Rabbits?"

That turned out to be an 'Excellent' answer, and Harry was released back to the castle to get some quick revision in before the next exam.

* * *

For most of the rest of Harry's exams, he knew the sort of thing he was getting into on the Practical exams. Charms was about, well, casting a Charm, and he was sure nobody would be surprised that in Transfiguration they were Transfiguring something, while Potions was making a Potion. (Harry _did_ sometimes wonder if one year Professor Snape would just have them prepare twenty ingredients properly, but no sign of that so far.)

The Defence Against the Dark Arts practical, however, was something entirely different. Remus had been careful not to give Harry any clues, so when they arrived at the scheduled exam place and time and saw _Sirius_ was the one standing there he was as surprised as anyone.

It was also a little odd that Sirius was standing next to a wooden wall with a door in it, set up in the middle of a field in the grounds.

"All right, everyone," Sirius said. "Hello to those who haven't met me, by the way, I'm Sirius Black. Your Defence professor has asked me to help organize this part of the exam, because I wasn't very busy and I couldn't make up an excuse quickly enough when he asked."

He pointed to the door. "You'll be going through there one by one, and making your way to the other end of the course. We're doing it like this so it's not _much easier_ for anyone who's not going first."

Seamus put up his hand. "Mr. Black? Two questions."

"Blimey, _two_ questions?" Sirius repeated. "Well, don't take all day, it's harder for Professor Lupin to mark if he has paws and that's scheduled for this evening."

"Well… first question, isn't it more realistic if the rest of us get to see what happens?" Seamus shrugged. "If we're dealing with a dragon or something – no offence, Harry – then the first poor sod who gets barbecued is a warning to the others, isn't he?"

"An excellent argument," Sirius agreed. "But this is an exam. What's your other question?"

"Well…" Seamus hesitated. "Me Mam says you bribed your way out of prison. Is that true?"

"If I was going to resort to bribery I'd have done it years earlier," Sirius told him with a severe look. "On an unrelated note, you're going first. If you _do_ get barbecued, make sure to shout it very loudly so you're a warning to others."

* * *

There were a few sounds from over the wooden wall as one student after another went through the course, but nothing that really gave Harry much of a clue about what was going on. Then it was his turn, and he took a deep breath before going through.

To his surprise, when Sirius had said 'course' he meant _obstacle_ course. There was a big Muggle paddling pool about three feet deep and covered with water lilies and pondweed, then a sort of potholed area, some marshy stuff and finally something that looked a lot like a trunk (next to Remus, Dean and Neville – Lavender was walking off up to the castle with her friends, so it looked like Dean and Neville were going to wait until all five of their group had finished.)

Taking a moment to Charm his clothes with the water-repelling charm, Harry splashed into the pool. It was just about the right depth that he could swim instead of wading, but he wasn't more than halfway across when some long, thin arms grabbed around his neck and tried as hard as they could to strangle him.

The arms didn't do very well, but it was still enough of a clue to Harry that there was at least one Grindylow in the pool. He stopped for a moment, rearing up so he could get his hind legs on the floor of the pool and free his forepaws, and carefully levered the Grindylow off his neck before casting a Stupefying Charm on it and dropping it back in the water.

From there it was a quick bound to get out of the pool, and Harry moved on to the next bit.

* * *

The potholes turned out to have Red Caps in them, which was more or less what Harry had expected, and he was able to show off a bit by casting spells with his wand (held in his tail) and with his breath (which, naturally, came from his mouth). Then the marshy bit was in a sort of dip in the land, so he couldn't actually see which way Remus was, but Harry just ignored the Hinkypunk until the spirit looked quite put out by the whole situation.

It might have been resigned by this point instead, though. Harry wasn't very good at reading the emotions of a creature made mostly of smoke.

"All right, Harry," Remus said, when Harry came over the crest and saw him. "If you can just go into the trunk, that's the last part of the exam. It's expanded on the inside, don't worry."

Harry did so, opening the top and walking down the stairs, and cast the Wand-Lighting Charm to get a bit more light. (He used his wand. He'd sometimes thought about casting that spell with his breath, but it seemed like being able to light things up by breathing fire was sort of redundant.)

After a few seconds, a rippling black shape came out of the darkness.

Startled by the sudden appearance of a Lethifold – which was much more dangerous than anything else in the exam – Harry quickly reminded himself of one of his happy moments and cast his Patronus. Ruth's silver form flew out and knocked straight into the Lethifold, sending it flying back into the wall, and then Harry realized something.

This wasn't a Lethifold at all. It was-

"_Riddikulus_!" he incanted, and the rippling black sheet changed into a brightly coloured patchwork quilt. It was much too big and plump to float menacingly around, either, and thumped to the floor with a soft clothy sound.

Poking it with his foot for a moment, Harry decided that that probably meant he'd sorted it out, and headed back up the stairs.

As he went, he wondered why it was that Boggarts changed like that.

Maybe it was because, if you'd dealt with a fear, your fear became different? Or your worst fear did, anyway.

* * *

"Well done, Harry," Remus told him. "Full marks."

Harry hadn't quite been expecting _full_ marks, and he smiled happily.

"What did you get for your Boggart?" Neville asked. "Was it the same as last time?"

"No, I got a Lethifold," Harry replied. "I was thinking about them earlier this week, maybe that's why?"

"I got The Thing again," Dean admitted. "I still think it's really creepy."

"Actually, how did you two do?" Harry asked.

"We should watch Ron," Neville pointed out, and Harry turned around so he could see.

Their friend was just reaching the paddling pool, and while they couldn't see quite what was happening Harry in particular could hear some distant sloshing – then Ron shouted a spell, and lilac flames went everywhere.

"I did something like that," Neville said. "Not for the Grindylow, though, for the Hinkypunk."

"You didn't need to, mate," Dean chuckled.

"Why not?" Harry asked, curious, as Ron clambered damply out of the paddling pool and started on the section with the Red Caps.

"He did the whole of the course with that big metal bar in one hand," Dean explained, and Neville lifted it slightly from his side to show where it was. "The Red Caps took one look and stayed away… and so did the Grindylow… and I think the Hinkypunk, too."

"I still had to make a path to tell me where to go in the swampy bit," Neville clarified. "I thought I might get lost, so I drew a fire path while I could still see where Professor Lupin was."

"That's clever," Harry told him, impressed. "I did think about flying, but I thought it might not really be in the spirit of the exam."

"I should have thought of that," Dean admitted. "I flew over the swamp bit, Professor Lupin did take some marks off for that because I didn't show I could actually _deal_ with the Hinkypunk. Still got a pretty good score, though."

He pointed at about where Ron was. "See that scorch mark? That was me – whoops!"

The Red Caps had made their move, and three of them came up to Ron from all directions. Ron's first move was to levitate one of their clubs, then pick it up himself and throw it into the distance.

Another one of the unpleasant little fae swung, and Ron Stunned it so that by the time the club actually reached him it just bounced off his leg without enough force to do any damage. That left the third, and Ron stepped back hastily from it before Disarming it.

"_Incendio,"_ he incanted, and a blast of flame knocked over the next Red Cap to emerge from one of the potholes.

"I think that means he's doing pretty well?" Neville suggested. "Okay, so the Hinkypunk bit is next..."

* * *

Ron was in the marsh for at least five minutes, which got Harry a bit worried, and eventually he loped to the side a bit (so he wouldn't spoil the test) and took off to check on his friend.

It turned out that Ron was waist-deep in the muck, having for some reason decided that the smoky spirit with the lantern was an excellent guide, and eventually had to change into Nutkin to unstuck himself. That meant getting _extremely_ muddy, about as badly as you normally got after repeated Quidditch crash-landings in a rainstorm, and Ron finally sloshed into the trunk for a minute before coming back out again and lying down on the grass.

"I feel kind of stupid now," he muttered. "And tired."

"There's only one exam left," Dean reassured him.

Ron jolted upright. "There is? What?"

"I don't think there's one left, is there?" Harry asked. "You did Muggle Studies yesterday, right?"

"Yeah, the practical was showing we knew how to wire a plug," Neville answered for them both.

"Oh, yeah, that's right, none of you have Divination," Dean remembered. "So that means you're done with exams, Ron – that's even better."

"Thank Merlin," Ron groaned, then shifted a little so he could watch. "Who's next? I think there were only Sally and Hermione left."

Hermione duly went next, and first dealt with the Grindylow with a Shield Charm – none of them could see it, but Harry heard her cast it with confidence and it seemed to have worked well enough.

She even took the time to dry herself off, then when she moved on to the Red Caps she just cast _Stupefy_ over and over again.

"Not very inventive, is it?" Dean asked.

"Hey, whatever works," Ron shrugged.

Dean spread his hands. "I'm not saying it's not working, just… you know, that's Hermione, she's forgotten more spells than we know."

"I don't think that makes sense," Harry frowned. "If we'd all learned the same number of spells, and I remembered two but someone else only remembered one, then _they'd_ have forgotten more spells than I knew. But Hermione just remembers all the spells we get taught _and_ reads about lots more as well."

"...huh," Dean said, as their friend reached the swampy bit. "I never thought about it like that."

* * *

It took Hermione almost no time at all to get through the swamp bit, and she clambered into the trunk with confidence.

"Wonder if hers has changed," Neville said.

There was a long pause, and then the trunk rocked from side to side.

"That doesn't seem like Professor McGonagall," Dean pointed out. "Or Hermione."

Another tremble, then there was a terrible snarl, and the lid burst open. Some kind of creepy yellow-and-white skeleton held together with bits of rusty wire came stumbling out, nearly falling over itself as it tried to get away as fast as possible.

A blur of feathers and claws and teeth came out after it, chasing it down, and Dean started laughing. The skeleton jolted, tripping, then exploded in a cloud of smoke.

"Miss Granger?" Remus asked. "Are you all right?"

The blur stopped moving, skidding to a halt and revealing itself to be Clever Girl. The dinosaur in question suddenly looked embarrassed, then reverted to Hermione.

"Sorry, Professor," she said. "I've always been kind of creeped out by the model skeleton in my dad's office, and I… panicked."

"Don't apologize, that was amazing!" Ron contributed.

"It was quite impressive," Remus agreed. "But I _will_ have to take a few marks off, because that's not how you're _meant_ to deal with a Boggart and it wouldn't work on most of them."

He rubbed his chin. "And now I'll have to see if Argus can get me another one in the next five minutes..."

* * *

"That was rubbish," Ron said, an hour or so after lunch.

Everyone with muddy clothes had gone up and got washed and changed, and now they (or, rather, Ron, Neville and Harry, plus a few of Harry's friends from the lower years) were sitting on one of the slopes leading down to the Black Lake.

"I thought it was a pretty good test," Neville replied. "The Hinkypunk was kind of fun."

"You had the same sort of test as us, then," Tanisis observed, licking the back of her paw. "What other creatures did you have?"

"Grindylow, Red Caps and a Boggart," Neville listed off.

"We didn't have Red Caps," Tyler shrugged. "We had fairies."

"They were really annoying," Anna groaned. "They look so much like they're going to be easy to catch, but apparently that's 'not really what you're supposed to do' and 'wouldn't set a good example'."

Tyler rolled his eyes. "If you'd had enough breakfast..."

Anna stuck her tongue out.

"No, I don't mean it was rubbish because of that," Ron retorted. "It's rubbish because Hermione should have got full marks. It got rid of the Boggart."

"I can sort of see what Remus meant," Harry said, shrugging his wings a bit. "I wasn't really sure if _I_ did well enough to get full marks, but if what you're supposed to do is not panic then Hermione _did_ sort of panic. She just panicked in the same way you did, Nev."

"I heard about this," Tanisis said. "You told us about it, I think, Harry."

Harry nodded in confirmation, and the sphinx chuckled.

"For most things, hitting them very hard works," she said. "You just need to know about the exceptions."

"I still don't think that was quite right," Ron said stubbornly, but then shrugged. "I suppose Hermione's probably going to get more than ninety percent anyway, though."

He sniggered. "Maybe that means someone will do better than her at a subject. You might, Harry, you did great at Defence last year. What did you get?"

"I don't really remember the exact numbers," Harry admitted.

He stretched, flexing his wings and letting them catch the afternoon sunlight. "Anyone feel like going for a fly?"

"After the training Wood gave us before the exams?" Ginny asked, groaning. "I think it's another few days before I can _stand_ to look at a broom."

"Speak for yourself, Gin," Ron countered. "I want to use this one last week when we can fly around a big area without getting seen by Muggles."

"That _is_ a good point," Ginny admitted, pushing herself upright a bit and thinking about it.

"We should probably wait for Dean, though," Neville pointed out. "And if we're going to go flying with as many people as possible, we should wait for the Twins to be done with their OWLs and Percy with his NEWTs. It might be Percy's last chance to fly as well."

He frowned. "Or maybe not. Herons aren't rare, are they?"

"They're not extinct," Harry said, thinking about the Swallows and Amazons books. There'd been an endangered bird in one of them – a Great Northern – but a heron had appeared once or twice, hadn't it? And it hadn't been endangered then.

On the other paw, those books were quite old.

"I might need to check a Muggle reference book," he added. "But I don't think most Muggles would be surprised to see a heron. It's much less surprising than someone on a broomstick."

Ron snorted suddenly.

"Hermione would be really disappointed with us," he explained. "We're planning on spending the time until we get our results _not_ worrying about what they are."

"I'm a bit worried," Tanisis volunteered. "It's the first year with the typewriters, and I made a few typing mistakes – I hope it's obvious what I meant."

"It's better than the quill, though," June said, which got an emphatic nod from her feline friend. "At least with the typewriter I knew I could get all my thoughts on the paper."

"Blimey, maybe I need a typewriter," Ron suggested. "If it's that much faster."

"I don't think it _is_," Harry said. "Or that's not why, anyway. It's more that using quills June and Tanisis – and Tiobald and the triplets – are way _slower_ than we are."

"It's kind of unfair your paws work so well for writing, if you think about it," Tyler butted in. "Hey, Anna, show him."

Anna sighed, and flowed smoothly into the form of a fox.

Picking up his sister, Tyler waited while she squirmed around to hold out her forepaw.

"No thumb," he explained, tapping each of the toes, then the little dewclaw. "Except this thing, and it's no good for writing."

Anna jumped out of his arms and went back to her human-shape. "Thanks, Anna," she said, sarcastically. "You're my favourite sister, Anna."

"I wouldn't go _that_ far," Tyler retorted.

Harry snorted, remembering that as it happened Tyler and Anna didn't _have_ another sister, then inspected his own paws.

He couldn't remember if mouse paws (or rat paws) looked sort of like his, but if they were then it probably meant that at least some of Redwall made sense – or at least the bits where it was the mice writing books. As far as the Redwall books were realistic at all.

Did Nora have the same sort of paws as him, or paws more like the ones the Smiths had? Harry supposed that with a big enough typewriter she could write anyway, and wondered if maybe he or Hagrid could teach her to read – it wasn't really something Empress could teach.

That made him think about how they still needed to test if Empress could teach _other_ dragons how to speak, but that thought was interrupted by a mournful howl drifting out of the Forbidden Forest.

"What was that?" Neville asked. "The moon's not risen yet, that can't be Professor Lupin..."

June had sat bolt upright, and she howled in reply – a spine-chilling and _loud_ sound from so close.

"Ow!" Ron yelped, putting both hands on his ears and nearly slipping over to land on one of Harry's wings. "What was _that_?"

"Trouble," June answered, ears flattening. "That was my whole family – they're in danger."

* * *

As soon as he heard what June said, Harry turned. He paused for a moment, trying to work out which direction the howling had come from, then decided he couldn't wait any longer and raised his wings for a downstroke.

Ron yelped, and then Harry was in the air. He gained height quickly, pushing himself up so he was above the nearby trees, then switched to flying as hard as he could towards the Forbidden Forest.

There was another howl, closer this time, and Harry adjusted slightly to make sure he was pointed right at the sound.

Glancing back behind him with a quick turn of his head – deliberately not doing it enough to throw him off course – Harry saw a sleek black panther loping along the ground after him, along with June and Tanisis and two red foxes a little further back. Ginny was just coming over the lip of the ground around the lake, probably because she didn't have any way of taking on a four-legged sprint, and Harry couldn't tell where Ron was at all.

The time it had taken to check had brought Harry near the tree line, and he angled up slightly before another powerful wingbeat to keep him moving forwards and over the scattered trees that were sort of 'not technically the Forbidden Forest _yet_'.

A few seconds later, Harry saw a centaur canter into view before skidding to a stop by one of the big oaks. It was a big stallion, not one of the ones he'd met before, and he had one of the same sort of giant longbows as Firenze did. It creaked audibly as he drew the bowstring tight, and then loosed an arrow back into the forest.

A dozen Wargs ran past the stallion, one of the older ones Harry had met once before and what looked like all of their youngsters, and Harry caught sight of other Wargs backing away from the forest with their hackles raised and growling steadily. There were other centaurs as well, some of them young foals and others armed with spears and bows and even one with a long staff.

It was only then, as he backwinged to try and work out what was going on, that Harry saw what they were all _facing_.

Spiders. _Giant_ spiders, easily as big as the largest ones from _The Hobbit_ – so large that Harry now had a new idea of what Shelob would be like – and moving forwards like a many-legged black carpet.

There was a squeaky gasp from right by Harry's shoulder, and he went a bit lower before starting to hover next to Ronan.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"The spiders attacked us," Ronan replied shortly. "I know not why."

They were getting closer, and Harry remembered vaguely that giant spiders – _Acromantula_, that was it – could understand human speech.

"Stop!" he shouted, then inhaled. _"__Ignis Verberaque___!"__

What came out of his muzzle was a great jet of flame, more like a rope than a whip, and it curled around before landing in a kind of barrier between the acromantulas and the other denizens of the forest.

Landing with a thud, Harry was about to try something else when he felt a tickling sensation down his wing. He looked, and saw Nutkin scurry along before dropping to the ground and turning into Ron.

"This is _literally_ worse than my Boggart," Ron said faintly.

"Begone!" called the big centaur Harry didn't know. "Return to your nest, spiders. We will destroy you if you come closer."

Ronan sighed, almost too softly for Harry to hear. "Bane..."

The spiders had halted at the line of fire, which was gradually expanding as it burned through the leaf litter. Then one of them chittered something in a language Harry didn't understand, and almost all of them burst into motion again.

They cleared Harry's fire line in a second, and there was a whoosh-thud as two of the centaur stallions and one mare loosed arrows from their giant bows. Ron had his wand out and cast a Stunning Spell, which knocked his target acromantula back but didn't seem to actually knock it out, and Harry spat out another jet of fire before taking off again.

Ron grabbed onto Harry's tail with his free hand and shifted back to squirrel, clearly deciding that being run down by a charge of several dozen giant spiders was a little _too _Gryffindor. The centaurs began backing away, one of June's parents charged in and bit at a spider leg, and then Harry couldn't quite see what was going on.

He banked around to get a better look, and June's father was on the ground with a spider pinning him down. Lapcat arrived in a blur of black fur, cannoning into the acromantula and sending them both rolling across the ground, and then Neville shifted back to human and shouted an Incendio.

Deciding not to try magic again, Harry went diving down for extra speed and spat a blast of flame at one of the acromantula. It went down with a crash, knocked over by the impact and probably hurt by the flame as well, and Harry pulled up – dodging around a tree – before turning around, trying to find somewhere he could help out in an increasingly chaotic battle.

June's wand was in her paws, and she and Tanisis cast stunning spells on one of the acromantula at the same time. It slowed for a moment, knocked slightly dizzy by being hit by two spells at once, and then got pounced on by one of the older wargs and knocked flat over.

Another one waved its legs around, trying to do something as flickering blue-and-white fire arced from leg to leg. More bluish fire came flying from Taira and Anna, currently in fox-form and prudently hiding behind Firenze, and Harry realized it had to be some kind of kitsune magic he'd just never encountered before.

Then Harry saw Bane again, his bow snagged by a length of silk from one of the acromantula and bitten in half by another. The centaur kicked out, sending a spider flying six feet to crash into a tree, but that left him overextended and another two knocked him to the floor.

Harry dropped low, pulling up just above the leaf litter so he could attack the spiders without hitting Bane, and blew the strongest blast of fire breath he'd ever managed. It roared out and hit both of the spiders, blasting them into the air and away from Bane, but as Harry began to pull up another spider launched itself at him and landed on his wing.

Knocked off course, Harry crash-skidded through the leaves and managed to end up sort of upright. One of the acromantula tried to bite him, broke its teeth on his hide, and then a _Flipendo _jinx hit it hard enough to knock it away from him.

Glancing up, Harry saw it had come from Ron – now about twenty feet up in an oak tree, having jumped off Harry while in squirrel-form – but before he could either say thank you or take off more spiders descended on him.

Growling deep in his throat, Harry exhaled a long torrent of flame towards some of the acromantula swarming on him. The first one he hit staggered back, legs on fire and waving, and another slammed two legs down on his head to drive it towards the floor.

That worked for a moment, and Harry's fire breath crisped some of the grass and began baking the mud beneath it before he coughed and had to take a breath. Then Ron sent another jet of light towards Harry and his opponents, this time one which Harry didn't recognize at first but which made all eight of the acromantula's legs stick together and sent the big spider toppling over.

"Get off Harry!" a familiar voice shouted, and a jet of intense flame washed just overhead. Harry felt suddenly quite warm, even though he hadn't actually been hit, and it _seemed_ like one of the acromantula who'd been holding him down had just vanished entirely in the flash of fire.

Nora shot overhead, wings booming, and pulled up into a graceful wingover before blasting another torrent of flame down at the giant spiders. Two more took direct hits, leaving little more than a curl of greasy smoke, and Harry heard the rest of them chittering urgently to one another.

He wasn't sure what they were saying, but he had a feeling that Nora was more than they'd bargained for.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Harry yanked his wings forcibly back out from underneath the acromantula who'd been pinning him down, and jumped straight into the air. Two of the giant spiders seized his tail in their jaws, pulling him back down as he fought to gain altitude, but Neville blurred into Lapcat and pounced directly on top of one of them.

The other took two glancing arrow hits on the carapace, not far from the eyes, and let go of Harry. He climbed straight up once the weight was removed, reaching the height of the tops of the trees, then spotted that there was an acromantula climbing up the very tree Ron had chosen to hide in.

"_Incendio Pila!"_ Harry incanted, spitting a ball of bright orange fire at the spider, and scored a direct hit. The flames engulfed his target for a moment, and when they faded there was a big sooty scorch mark on its caparace and the tree was on fire.

Harry was worried about whether the acromantula was going to keep climbing or not, but then June and Tanisis both cast Stunners at it and it fell drunkenly off the tree trunk.

"Can I get a lift, mate?" Ron asked, then shifted to Nutkin and ran along one of the tree branches. Harry flitted over to pick him up, then turned to see what was going on and stared.

Ginny had arrived as well, and she was sending a bizarre hex Harry didn't know at some of the spiders. He wasn't sure what it was doing to them, either, but it looked unpleasant.

That was the least of it, though. The centaurs had all gathered together around the prone form of Ronan, who looked badly wounded, and half of them were bloody from wounds. They were surrounded by most of the adult wargs – and even as he watched, Neville blurred from panther form to human form long enough to levitate June's mother out of the clutches of two acromantula.

As another of the giant spiders lunged for him, he shifted smoothly back to panther and dodged away from the attack. Going back to human for long enough for a second levitation charm, he stopped her from hitting the ground too hard, then escorted her out of the area of the fight.

Nora made another pass, scouring a line between the defenders and the spiders – like the one Harry had made, but four feet wide and issuing forth a great cloud of smoke.

There was a momentary lull, though so much fire had been going around in the fight that there was already a dull crackling roar underlying everything.

Harry wondered for a moment if there was more help coming, then his paw dove into his pocket and he took his wand out.

He'd been so _stupid!_

"_Expecto Patronum,"_ he said, trying to concentrate on a happy memory. _"Expecto Patronum!"_

The second time it worked, and Harry told Ruth what to do before he'd even properly formed. "There's a fight going on at the edge of the forest – acromantulas!"

Even the few seconds it took to say that was long enough that the acromantula came to a decision, and they began to charge again. All the bow-armed centaurs drew back their arrows, wands went up, and then there was a sharp _crack_.

The fires vanished as if someone had turned them off at a wall switch, and so did the smoke. Nora had been about to dive, but she stopped and pulled up again to hover – and the acromantulas stopped as well.

One of the centaur's arrows was loosed, perhaps by accident, and before it was halfway it turned into an odd brown-and-steel bird which hovered in the air.

Professor Dumbledore walked over towards it, extending his arm, and the bird alighted on it.

"Good afternoon," he said pleasantly. "I do hope someone knows what's going on here, because I was in the middle of quite an excellent cup of tea."

* * *

It was almost an odd thing to think about Professor Dumbledore – who'd been nothing but pleasant for Harry's whole time at Hogwarts – but it was now that Harry could really see why it was that Tom Riddle had been outright _scared_ of Dumbledore.

It wasn't that he was angry, really – Dumbledore seemed more sad than anything, even though he was polite and courteous and smiling. It was partly just how _good_ he was at magic, because Harry was now at the point he felt like he knew how hard what Dumbledore had just done was, and partly that he was completely pleasant and well mannered at the same time.

Harry sort of knew what it was like when people met someone like Gandalf or Belgarath, now.

* * *

"The weird thing about this is that we missed being there because of Divination," Dean said, after Harry had finished describing how Dumbledore arrived. "Did I get around to telling you the weird thing that happened in Divination?"

"Don't think so, mate," Ron replied. "Except for the Professor predicting you were going to die all the time."

"No, this was in the exam," Dean clarified. "I'll tell you guys in a bit. What happened next?"

"Not very much," Neville replied, frowning. "Some of the spiders did speak English, but a lot of the talking happened in Acromantulaish or whatever it is. Professor Dumbledore speaks it."

"It seems like he speaks everything," Ron sniggered. "Except Dragonish."

"I think Hagrid said he'd asked to learn it," Harry volunteered, thinking about what he _did_ know about why the acromantula had attacked.

Professor Dumbledore had told him that the colony had been nervous for the last two years. Something about how spiders and snakes were mortal enemies, and that they'd been able to tell that Empress was moving about the castle more – which had led to more patrols, which had led to the acromantula being more threatening to the forest's other inhabitants, which in turn had resulted in the food shortages June had been complaining about and why all the centaurs had been going around armed.

"The headmaster said that that wasn't all the acromantula," Harry supplied. "It was just this group who were the most hot headed, I think."

"I hope the rest of them are _much_ more private," Ron said, shivering. "What's going to happen to those ones? I don't think I was close enough to hear this bit."

"They're going to a protected bit of rainforest in Borneo, I think," Harry frowned. He was _fairly_ clear on most of the details, but that wasn't the same as being completely certain. "And Dumbledore's going to go and speak to the rest of them, to make sure they know to mind their manners."

He shrugged his wings. "I suppose they've been there for several decades and nobody's been hurt until now, so they're sort of… doing better than wizards?"

"Got a point there," Dean admitted.

"I kind of feel bad that we weren't there," Hermione said, squeezing the fingers of her right hand together with her left. "That sounds terrible."

Ron nodded slightly. "Yeah."

"Is there a reason we couldn't be?" Dean asked. "With that time turner thing you've got?"

"Oh, no, I couldn't," Hermione said, shaking her head. "None of them saw anything that even hinted that we were there. So we mustn't have, so we can't."

"I feel like we need Doctor Streetmentioner's book of time travel tenses," Harry said, then shook his head when everyone – even Hermione – gave him an odd look. "Sorry, just something I remembered from the Hitch-Hiker's Guide."

"Anyway, that thing I was going to mention," Dean resumed. "So our exam was about using a crystal ball, and I've got to admit I was proper naff at it. Unless the weather forecast for tomorrow is fog, anyway."

It was a little thing, but Harry found it so funny he almost fell over laughing. Ron did the same, and Neville trembled for a moment before shifting into Lapcat and starting to cough-purr.

"I hope our theory exam counts for more than our practical," Hermione said, as everyone else recovered.

"Well, maybe you just don't remember something that happened in your exam?" Dean suggested. "Because I was halfway through trying to come up with a way to make fog interesting, when Professor Trelawney sat bolt upright and started saying something really weird."

He looked up slightly. "It was, um… _Soon, the webs of the Amazon will come._

_Relentless they will seem, then the wood will kindle._

_The fire will stick, and all will see the truth._

_The webs of the Amazon are coming to the west._"

"Hold on, hold on," Ron said, as soon as Dean stopped reciting. "Your exam was before we had this big fight, right?"

"Think so," Dean guessed. "I didn't look at my watch. But she'd been in there for ages anyway, so she couldn't know – and then she didn't remember what had just happened."

"Blimey," Ron summarized. "An actual prophecy."

Hermione nodded, a little reluctantly. "I've heard that proper prophecies have the person giving them not remember what actually happened. They're supposed to record prophecies in the Ministry, though I don't know anything about how it's done."

She frowned. "The only odd thing is that Acromantula are from Borneo, not Brazil."

"That's only where they started, though, isn't it?" Neville asked, now back to human shape. "So maybe these ones were from Brazil, or something. It's not like every single Sphinx is from Egypt."

"Or every human from Kenya," Harry contributed.

"Honestly, though, she _could_ have made that prediction a few days earlier," Hermione grumbled. "What's the point of a prophecy if it's about something that happens at almost exactly the same time?"

"Well, I _predict_ I'm going to have to head off soon to make sure I can change Remus back," Harry added, looking at the clock. "With wolfsbane it's okay, but he's probably got loads of marking to do."

"So long as he gives Hermione good marks," Ron muttered.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Oops I accidentally a fight scene.


	50. Dragons with Summer Activities

Three days before the end of term, Harry got his results from his exams.

It was much quicker to get results from the end-of-year exams than it was for the OWLs and the NEWTs, probably because the teachers had been the ones to set the exams so they knew the answers, and Harry was overall quite proud of how he'd done. After three years he was getting used to the way they marked things at Hogwarts, where an E was better than an A but worse than an O, and his marks were all Es and Os so that was perfectly all right. (There were percentage scores as well but it seemed like a seventy-five percent score was an E in some subjects and an O in others, oddly.)

Hermione was _very_ proud of her own marks, and once they saw them Harry had to agree. Having all Os was one thing, but Hermione had three hundred and twenty percent in her Muggle Studies tests and (much like Ron, Dean and Neville) had got plenty of extra marks for her Animagus transformation.

In fact, it was quite hard to find _any_ subject where Hermione had got less than a hundred percent, and after looking it over Harry could only see two – one for Defence, where she'd been marked down to about ninety-three percent for what had happened in the Practical Exam, and one for Divination where she admitted that she just wasn't very good at the practical.

Still, hearing that Professor Trelawney had actually made a prediction – even if it wasn't a very good one – seemed to have convinced her to at least keep going with the subject.

For his part, Neville was sort of dazed about how much better his practical marks were than last year, which made Harry feel both really glad for Neville and sort of sad that they hadn't noticed earlier. And Dean pronounced himself happy with his own results, even amused that – like Harry – he was able to claim a higher score than Hermione in at least one subject.

* * *

That same day, Hedwig brought Harry a letter asking him to come up to the Headmaster's Office.

It occurred to Harry that he probably was spending a lot more time going to the Headmaster's Office than most pupils at secondary schools, though he was _certain_ that it was for reasons which wouldn't apply at any Muggle secondary schools.

There were adders in England and Scotland, so it was sort of possible that someone might need to go and see the Headmaster after finding a dangerous snake in the basement, but Harry very much doubted that anyone in, say, Eton, had had to deal with something like an attempt by an evil wizard to make himself immortal.

Maybe it'd be different if he was involved in some kind of league between schools, like if there were Quidditch team games between different schools all over Europe – but then again with how long a Quidditch game could be it probably wouldn't work. You couldn't really have a team spending a week in France, could you?

Though Fred and George would probably point out that the main problem there was that it was France, and that a week in Spain would be a lot more pleasant.

That thought took Harry to Dumbledore's office door, where he said the password ('Strollers') and clambered up the stairs.

"Wonderful to see you, Harry," Dumbledore said, as Harry was about to reach the top of the stairs. "Do come in."

"How did you know it was me this time, Professor?" Harry asked, interested.

"A simple and subtle art, Harry," Dumbledore told him solemnly. "I have only just changed the password on my door, and nobody else yet knows it. Please, take a seat."

Harry chose the chair by the bookcase, partly because it was by the bookcase and party because it was the one he found most comfortable.

"Allow me first to say how well you handled the events of the last few days, Harry," Dumbledore began. "That being said, however, I do hope you are not having any problems of your own related to the whole affair?"

"Well… a bit," Harry replied, thinking about the few minutes of chaos. "I'm sort of uncertain about what happened to the acromantula. I'm _fairly_ sure I hurt some of them quite badly, and I think a couple of them died."

Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "I do understand your concern, Harry. If you think the same as I do on such things, you will always wonder whether you were doing the right thing. Whether you could have done better, and avoided so much bloodshed."

"That's exactly it," Harry agreed, one paw going to his robe pocket for a moment. "And I feel like… if I'd remembered about being able to send a Patronus message earlier, maybe you would have been able to turn up sooner."

"Alas, the better one is at magic the harder such questions become," Dumbledore replied. "But as an old man who has thought about this very problem many times, Harry, the best reassurance I can give you is that it is the fact you worry which shows you are a good person."

Harry was going to say that wasn't really much help, but thought about it more carefully.

Maybe it did help, a bit.

"Though, of course, I am not the only person you could ask for advice on the subject," Dumbledore added. "And if it is someone with the wisdom of age you seek, I am merely one hundred and twelve, and I am sure you know someone many times that age who may also have some thoughts on how right it is to protect Hogwarts and her students."

Harry blinked, not quite sure he'd heard right. "Professor… um, are you suggesting that I ask Empress what she thinks?"

"Why, of course," Dumbledore confirmed. "Unless of course you would rather I put you in touch with my dear friend Nicholas Flamel?"

He smiled gently. "In either case, I am not at all sure they would agree with me. But it is often important, Harry, to learn to listen to what many people think and decide what is right based on all of their views."

Harry nodded slowly, absorbing that.

It was a good point, and he supposed it was the sort of thing a teacher like Dumbledore would think about.

"If that is all you would like to discuss?" Dumbledore asked. "A short meeting, I think, but a productive one."

Harry got halfway out of his chair, then stopped. "Um… Professor? Didn't you ask to see me?"

"So I did, so I did," Dumbledore agreed. "I wished to speak to you about your plans for the summer, Harry, for I fear it will be a little more complicated this year than normal."

That drew a frown, as Harry sat back down and tried to think of what it was that Dumbledore could mean.

The first and most obvious thing was the Quidditch World Cup, which was rumbling along steadily towards a final some time in August. They weren't quite sure _when_ the final would be yet, because the semi-finals and quarter-finals of a Quidditch tournament might well take three days each, but Harry was interested in going along to see how good world-class Quidditch play was at least.

It seemed like most witches and wizards in Britain would be going, anyway, so it was more or less the polite thing to do.

He'd done some magic practice over the summer, as well, but apart from that there wasn't really anything else he could think of.

"Sorry, Professor," he admitted. "I'm not sure what you mean, apart from the world cup."

"The world cup is part of it, of course, Harry," Dumbledore agreed. "I could hardly keep you from it. But I would also prefer it if you could spend as much time as possible in perfecting the Fiendfyre spell we have talked about before – there is, of course, no particular rush, but I believe I may have worked out where another of Tom's Horcruxes might be found."

He made a little dismissive gesture. "I have still not worked out quite how many he has, but that is for another time."

Harry had been thinking about what Dumbledore said, and tilted his head. "So – oh, I see, Professor. You mean the tricky thing about my plans for the summer is that I have to manage… my normal homework, staying a month at Privet Drive, doing Fiendfyre practice, the Quidditch World Cup, and going with you to find the Horcrux?"

"Exactly, Harry," Dumbledore agreed, quite pleased. "As you can see, it is all quite doable but also not particularly easy."

"Well..." Harry thought about it. "If I do all my homework while I'm at Privet Drive, then I can spend a month there and get that sorted out. Ron wants us to visit Hermione's house for a day or so, because there's a comet that's going to hit Jupiter in the third week of July, but then I can just go to Dogwarts on the third of August so it counts for a full month."

Dumbledore looked distinctly surprised. "Dogwarts, Harry?"

"That's what Sirius ended up calling his house in Hogsmeade," Harry clarified, smiling at the memory of when his pseudo-guardian had finally realized he'd been missing such an obvious pun. "And then I can spend several days making sure I've got Fiendfyre under control, while if the Quidditch World Cup is too soon then we can stop and take a break from the Fiendfyre practice."

"Dogwarts," Dumbledore said again, shaking his head and chuckling. "Dear me. And I do believe that sounds quite manageable, Harry."

He paused. "Tell me, did you say something about a comet that will be hitting Jupiter? How marvellous. I do wonder what it will look like."

"I think the magazine I read said we weren't going to be able to see anything from Earth," Harry cautioned, thinking about the article. "But there's a space probe called Galileo which is going to be able to get a better look, and it'll send pictures back. It's the first time we've had a chance to see something like this."

"Space probes and telescopes," Dumbledore said, looking up in the direction of where the sky would be if the roof didn't exist. "It would be rather marvellous to be able to see something like that from close up, though I imagine the food is not nearly so good on Callisto as it is here."

"I don't think so," Harry agreed, though he did think a bit about the Callisto Tower in the Talents of Earth series. "You'd probably have to take a packed lunch."

"Alas, I have tried to make a packed lunch in the past, but I simply cannot decide what to leave behind. It becomes a packed three-course banquet," Dumbledore admitted.

He smiled pleasantly. "Though if you ever get the chance, Harry, I can certainly recommend having a three-course banquet atop a small hill you have hiked to the top of. It feels most satisfying."

"I'm afraid it wouldn't feel as satisfying for me, sir," Harry admitted. "I can fly, and flying to the top of a small hill is much less work."

"From my admittedly sparse grasp of Muggle physics, I would have thought it would be the other way around," Dumbledore said, then waved his hand. "But then again, I am not a physician."

"Do you mean physicist, sir?" Harry checked.

"Oh, dear me, not one of those either," Dumbledore agreed readily. "Nor even a physiotherapist. I am entirely without fizz of any description, aside from what may be found in a fizzing whizzbee."

* * *

Harry found it very easy to talk to Dumbledore, and they ended up spending nearly another half-hour going between topics Harry had enjoyed from the year's classes, how he felt he was getting on, and four or five other topics.

He gave Dumbledore a potted lesson in Dragonish, or Parseltongue, and Dumbledore proved to be a quick study. It took him a few attempts to get the hang of hissing, but after that it was all easy and within ten minutes the Headmaster was able to say that he was the headmaster of Hogwarts and it was nice to meet whoever it was he was speaking to.

Dumbledore mentioned poor Ronan, as well, who'd been particularly badly hurt by the spider attack, and that Madam Pomfrey was quite optimistic that he'd be out of the Hospital Wing before the week was out. (Harry was impressed that Madam Pomfrey could heal a centaur in the first place, but Dumbledore told him smilingly that it was quite amazing the sorts of trouble young wizards could get into.)

Something about the whole situation felt sort of familiar, and after a bit Harry realized that what it was reminding him of was Gandalf in the first bit of the Fellowship of the Ring. When he was visiting the Hobbits in the Shire, and there were still problems in the world but they were far away and could be ignored for a while.

Harry supposed that meant he was the Hobbits, but that was all right. Being a Hobbit was a nice sort of person to be, really, and he couldn't complain.

* * *

"Well, that's it for another year," Hermione said, as they watched the outside world pick up speed around them.

Harry could just about see some of the Thestrals and their carriages not far from the station – until they went into a tunnel, at least – and wondered why it was that Ron _hadn't_ been able to see them. Perhaps he'd just not been looking in the same direction during the fight?

It probably didn't matter.

The compartment wall receded, making it so the little room was more like twenty feet on a side, and Percy put his wand down in satisfaction. "There we go."

"Blimey, Perce, how much room do you think we're going to need?" a Weasley Twin asked. (Harry sniffed discreetly, and decided it was Fred.) "We mostly fit in a normal compartment, don't we?"

"So long as nobody else decides to turn up," Percy confirmed. "Though I felt it was a good idea to make sure that Ronald and Dean have the space to change back."

Both the young wizards in question shifted back from their Animagus forms, and Ron rolled his neck a bit. "Thanks… I wasn't looking forward to trying to read a comic book like this. Speaking of which, Harry, can I borrow one of yours?"

Harry rummaged around in his backpack, which mostly contained things which might help with the train journey (and his tent) and produced an Asterix book.

"Oh, cool, that's a new one," Ron said, taking it. "Thanks."

"What I don't get is why you're in this compartment," Neville said, looking up from a travel board games set Dean was getting out. "Don't Prefects ride in their own compartment?"

Percy shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure I _am_ a Prefect any more. I've finished my NEWTs, and I'm not going to be going back to Hogwarts."

"Except as a teacher," Ron pointed out, two pages into _Asterix and the Roman Agent_. "You could teach Prefects how to cope with impossible brothers."

"What do you think I've been trying to do for the last three years?" Percy asked.

"...by George, you know what this means?" George asked. "We're free!"

"Free from the shadow of the heron over us!" Fred agreed. "We're going to get away with _so much_ next year!"

Percy smiled.

"...uh oh," Fred added. "I know that expression."

"I think that's the expression that a fish sees before getting speared by a heron," George agreed. "To extend the metaphor."

He waited for a moment.

"George?"

Harry quickly checked to make sure he was right about which twin was which.

"What?" Fred asked.

"Aren't you going to ask what fish I'm talking about?" George checked.

"I wasn't," Fred replied. "Er, that is, I mean, which fish, Fred?"

"Pollocks," George concluded solemnly.

"I think you're trying too hard," Hermione said delicately.

"Besides," Harry added. "Are you sure you're going to get away with things, or are you going to be too busy trying not to get foxed?"

"Ouch!" George said, putting a hand over his heart and collapsing to the floor.

It took Harry a moment to realize that the pun worked on two levels, but once he did he was quite pleased with it.

* * *

The trip back to London always had the same sort of feeling, like it was ten minutes until the library closed and you were running around trying to make sure you'd remembered everything you wanted to do before it closed. Even though it was going to open again the next day, you always wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten something to say.

Luna, Tanisis, the Barlos sisters and both the Smiths popped in to say hello and then stayed in the compartment, along with Lee Jordan (who Fred immediately accused of giving the Smiths tips – not that Lee denied the charge) and Ginny, and Harry noticed that the only one of the oddly-shaped students who was missing was Tiobald.

According to Luna, it was because his wheelchair was awkward enough on a train that there wasn't really much point of having him travel the whole way to London only for him to then be Apparated the whole way back again. Arriving with the rest of the students was one thing, because that was the start of the school year, but this was something else.

Of course, because this was Luna, she _also_ told Harry that she had impeccable sources to the effect that alien lizard people had invaded Britain – though, apparently, they'd landed in the Ministry of Magic, and had somewhat to their surprise been mistaken for Wizengamot members – and that Gilderoy Lockhart had escaped from Azkaban and become an award-winning Muggle actor.

They were getting into the midlands by that point, and Luna cleared up something Harry had wondered about, which was where she'd been during the spider attack. As one of the only people in Hogwarts who could translate sign language _and_ one of the only ones who could speak Mermish, she'd been on call in case there was an issue in one of Tiobald's exams.

* * *

"So, do you think you're going to go for being an Animagus?" Hermione asked, looking up from her book as they went through a tunnel. They were well into London, now, and tower blocks kept appearing either side of the tracks.

"I'm not sure we _can_," Flopsy said. "I wonder if any other three-headed dogs have tried."

"It might be human-only magic," Anne suggested. "Like how we have fey-only magic. But it'd be kind of funny to be an animagus of an animal that wasn't a fox. Would we be able to go animal to fox?"

"Oh, maybe your human form and your fox form would have different Animagus forms?" Ginny suggested. "But if you mean me, Hermione, of course I am – I'm looking forward to finding out what I am."

She nudged Luna. "What about you? Are you going to give it a go?"

Luna tapped her foot.

"Maybe," she decided eventually. "Of course, if I don't like the animal I won't do it in the first place."

"I'm not sure you _can_ tell what animal you're going to get before trying?" Ron asked, closing the last of a stack of six Asterix books. "I thought that was half the point."

"Oh, there are ways to tell," Luna said seriously. "I've heard there's a mirror out there that shows the form of the animal under your skin."

"Really?" Lee asked, pushing himself half-upright. "That sounds useful. Where is it?"

"Why are you asking me?" Luna asked. "I don't know anything about that."

"You're the one who raised the subject," Dean pointed out.

"No, that was Hermione," Luna denied. "I just passed on hearsay. Some say the distinction is important to a reporter."

That said, she inspected the oversized crossword spread out on her trunk. "I think that one might be 'boggle'."

"Oh, so it is," Tanisis agreed. "Which would make that one 'gorilla'."

* * *

After flying home – he'd specifically asked not to be picked up, via a letter Hedwig had dropped somewhat reluctantly into the Royal Mail – Harry discovered that Dudley was on a diet to try and lose weight.

It seemed that 'diet' in this case meant mostly fruit, which was okay for Harry but Dudley probably wasn't happy with. Though everyone else in the house had to have the same kind of diet – which seemed a little odd to Harry – and after the first few days of doing homework and taking care of the lawn Harry started thinking about nutrition.

The young dragon had to admit he was not exactly an expert on nutrition. In fact, he was probably the single intelligent being on the planet who had the least to worry about when worrying about nutrition, since he could (as far as he could tell) digest literally anything and didn't seem to have any kind of deficiency problems from _not_ eating things.

But he did remember some science books, and after checking on one he found a bit more details about it.

It looked like the important thing was that it was a lot easier to lose weight if you were doing something to get rid of energy, instead of just not eating much and waiting for your weight to go down by itself. That made sense to him, because all the food you ate had to get burned off somehow, and doing things like "thinking" and "breathing" probably burned off food but that amount didn't really change.

Wondering if maybe the reason the diet was all fruit and vegetables was so that Dudley didn't eat more than he should, Harry looked up a few recipes that didn't have many calories and things in but which looked like they might be a bit tasty.

When he added up all the time it took, it was probably almost a day of time put together over the first week of the holidays, and Harry found himself sort of rushed off his paws trying to make sure he was doing his chores and doing good amounts of his homework while still doing the research and stuff.

Still, it was exciting, and Harry felt he'd rather have some variety in food for three weeks and try and help his cousin.

* * *

Harry wasn't sure of a good way to suggest it, but it turned out that a good way to suggest it turned up by itself one day. They were having grapefruit, this time, and Uncle Vernon looked at the small cut of fruit before snorting.

"You'd think there'd be enough for a decent meal," he said. "Especially with that nonsense that's been going on in Africa these days. Must be more mangoes to go around now."

"I was reading a book about this sort of thing, Uncle Vernon," Harry told him.

"What, this nonsense in Africa?" Uncle Vernon asked. "Mangoes? Or was it one of the books by… your lot."

"Not one of those," Harry answered. "About nutrition and things like that – from the library. It said that..."

Harry paused, trying to summarize it.

"If you're having healthy food, and the right amount of it, then the best way to lose weight is to do exercise. But you don't have to just eat nothing but fruit, if the food you do make is healthy. There were some recipes as well."

Harry turned to look at Aunt Petunia, noticing in passing that the mention of eating something other than fruit had Dudley turning pleading eyes on her.

"Do you think I could give it a go at making some?" he suggested. "There wouldn't be much, because that's sort of the point, but it'd be interesting to try."

"All right, then," Aunt Petunia agreed, after looking at Dudley again.

"But it had better not be that expensive health food nonsense!" Vernon added sternly.

Harry had also given some thought about what kind of exercise Dudley might like, and suggested that he take up weight lifting. That sounded like it was sort of acceptable to Uncle Vernon, and Dudley didn't seem sure about it but at least it wasn't running or one of those things.

* * *

When Harry did serve his first healthy-but-tasty meal attempt a few days later, it went over really very well indeed all things considered. Uncle Vernon asked all sorts of questions about what on earth 'Spelt' was, and it _had_ been sort of tricky to get the right kind of mushrooms, but Dudley ate his entire portion with gusto and nearly persuaded Uncle Vernon to give him seconds (until Aunt Petunia pointed out that Dudley _was_ trying to lose weight, after all).

It went so well that the next day Dudley showed Harry one of his newest games. It was one about a hedgehog running around very fast indeed, but the thing which was really neat was that the hedgehog had a fox following him around and helping out… and not only could Harry control the fox with the second controller, but the fox was also able to fly! (Harry had no idea how that made sense, because he knew a flying fox was a sort of bat instead of just a fox using its tail like a helicopter did, but it seemed to work in the game.)

It had been a long time since he'd been able to play a game with Dudley like that, and it was one of the things that meant Harry really quite enjoyed his time at Privet Drive over the summer.

It was a particularly hot and sunny year, he was getting on better with Dudley than ever, there was a supply of new books to get… even the inevitable homework couldn't do much to dampen Harry's spirits, and even then he just reminded himself that doing it sooner meant that he'd be able to enjoy himself guilt-free for the rest of the summer holidays.

On top of that, he was able to move on to reading _Dragonflight_ to Empress. The mirrors worked just as well from four hundred miles away, and while _Dragonflight_ was more complicated and a bit harder to explain than _The Hobbit_ it was sort of pleasant to be able to explain why one of his favourite books was, well, one of his favourite books. It was like a two-person book club, in a way.

* * *

A few days before it happened, it turned out that actually the impact of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet into Jupiter was going to be spread over the course of a whole week. That made it much more inconvenient for everyone to go and visit Hermione to watch the actual impacts, because they'd have to stay there for so long, but in the same letter where Hermione told Harry that she also told him that she'd record all the bits that made it onto the TV news so they could watch it a few days later than they'd originally planned.

Harry decided the simplest thing to do with this information was to send Hedwig on to give a letter to Dean, then mirror-call Sirius to have him pass it on to Neville and _especially_ to Ron. It was actually surprisingly inconvenient, because Harry had already got used to the idea he could send a Patronus to someone magical to give them the news straight away, but fortunately he remembered before he got in trouble for casting magic outside of school.

There were times when the magical way of doing things was wonderfully convenient, like sending letters and travelling hundreds of miles, but there were times when the Muggle way of doing things was much simpler, like being able to telephone someone.

Admittedly Harry was fairly sure that both Ron and Neville would be _able_ to telephone someone now, but neither of them had a phone in their respective houses. Though, now he thought about it, it was quite likely Ron's dad had a _dismantled_ phone in his shed – Arthur Weasley seemed like the sort of person who dismantled things, and then put them back together again to see if he'd understood them.

* * *

When it actually came that they all went around to Hermione's house – Harry flew, Ron and Neville got Apparated by older members of their family, and Dean simply took the tube – it turned out that the comet impact had been really worth it. There had been massive explosions on Jupiter leaving scars as big as the whole planet Earth, and the explosions themselves had been three times as high as the distance from London to Hogwarts.

It had been just amazing to think about, and to see the pictures, and it was more than a bit worrying when Neville asked hesitantly what would have happened if the comet had hit Earth instead.

Suddenly it was a lot easier to understand what 'an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs' had actually been _like_.

Fortunately, they hadn't been left with that thought when they all went home again, because Ron shared with them what he'd been doing over the summer. He'd been keeping up with his homework, of course – everyone laughed when he said Hermione wouldn't let him _not_ keep up with his homework, even though she was a hundred miles away – but he'd also started helping his dad in the shed. They'd set up a radio, and while Ron admitted that neither of them had the least clue what was happening in most of the programs they at least had something to listen to while they were in there.

* * *

The end of July seemed to sort of sneak up on Harry, and he counted himself a bit lucky he'd remembered about Neville's birthday in time to send him his present. (This time it was two of the Drizzt Do'Urden books, on the grounds that Drizzt had a panther companion and that was sort of fitting.)

Of course, when it was Neville's birthday, Harry's own birthday was just around the corner, and he found himself receiving several presents over the whole period of July 30 and July 31 – partly because for some of his friends the only way they could send him letters via Owl Post was for him to have recently sent Hedwig to them, and partly because Dobby was so tremendously excited to deliver Harry's presents from the Weasleys that he arrived at three minutes past midnight and piled them on the floor.

It was nice to see Dobby again, and Harry had a nice long chat with him about how much better it was working for the Weasleys than working at the Malfoys. He certainly seemed more cheerful than before, which meant Harry was quite proud of what he'd done.

Then it was time to get on to the presents themselves.

* * *

Dobby's delivery from most or all of the Weasleys consisted largely of a quite impressive amount of home-made sweet things – fudge, nougat and toffee, plus some of what Harry _thought_ was taffy. It seemed quite tasty, but Harry had never been quite sure if the difference between taffy and toffee was just spelling or something else.

Fred and George had also sent him an odd wooden statue, and the accompanying booklet declared it to be a Patented Weasley No-Fuss Tooth Cleaning Bird. Activating it with the tap of his wand made the red bird animate and fly into the air before inspecting Harry's teeth closely, and when it turned out that nothing was currently stuck between his teeth it landed back on the perch and went still.

Harry shook his head, wondering just where _that_ idea had come from, then turned to the present from Ron.

Much to his surprise, the wrapping paper contained an entirely Muggle sextant. It seemed that Ron had decided to help out in case Harry ever got lost again, and though Harry wasn't a hundred percent sure Ron knew what a sextant _did_ it was still a nice thought.

Dean had branched out a little into sculpture, making four little clay dragons which he'd had fired, and he'd painted one to be all bronze like Mnementh. The other three were much more unusually coloured – one was purple and gold, one was more green with bright red spines, and the last was black but with purple underneath the wings and on the end of the tail.

Apparently he'd had his sisters join in on painting them, and Harry was touched – so the dragons went up on top of his bookshelves, each one sort of like a 'guardian'.

For their part, Sirius and Remus had provided a large backpack which could be shrunk to be carried more easily, sort of like the backpack version of Harry's bag – which would make it much easier to go shopping in London, for example – and Hagrid had got Harry a book all about magical creatures and monsters, called the Monster Book of Monsters.

Harry had to growl at it to get it to calm down, but once he'd done that it was easy enough to read.

Then Neville had sent him a collection of half-a-dozen recently released fiction books from Flourish and Blotts. His accompanying note apologized if Harry had already read any of them, and Harry _had_ read two of them, but the other four were new and Harry liked the look of them already.

Finally, Hermione sent him a large parcel, one which Hedwig had finally arrived with a little before midnight on the evening of Harry's birthday itself, and because of that Harry had given her extra treats and praise before opening the wrapping paper.

To his astonishment, it was a whole boxed-set for Dungeons and Dragons about playing Dungeons and Dragons _as_ dragons.

It all sounded like marvellous fun, and Harry wondered if someone would be willing to organize a game for the club at school so Harry could take a turn at being a player.

* * *

"And welcome to Dogwarts!" Sirius announced, making a sweeping bow as Harry arrived through the Floo from Grimmauld Place. "This is a marvellous place, you know."

"I _have_ been here before, Sirius," Harry chuckled.

"Pish tosh," Sirius replied with a wave of his hand. "You've been to Sirius Black's house in Hogsmeade, but you haven't been to _Dogwarts_ – not since it got renamed, anyway. And it's a much more magical place than a mere house."

He indicated the ceiling. "The sky outside is bewitched to look like the ceiling. Fortunately it also keeps the cold and the rain out."

Harry reached up a wing and poked the ceiling, which still seemed as solid as ever.

"There's at least one secret passage," Sirius continued. "There's a hidden door in the kitchen where you open it and suddenly find that you're outside."

"Do you mean the back door?" Harry asked, thinking about that.

"Perhaps," his dogfather allowed. "And, most importantly of all, it's been a home to wizards for more than a thousand hours."

Doing Arithmancy had meant Harry had got a bit better at maths like that. "So… about a month?"

"Correct," Sirius agreed brightly. "Anyway, you know where your bedroom is? I made sure there was enough space to put your tent, so you've got access to all your things."

Harry did, so he set off, and Sirius came with him so they could talk.

"There's going to be something special at Hogwarts this year," the adult wizard said. "I'm really looking forward to it."

"There is?" Harry replied, ears perking up in interest. "What is it?"

"Well, it's supposed to be kept secret from the pupils," Sirius said, sounding reluctant. "But I suppose I _could_ tell you, if I knew."

Seeing Harry's surprise, he suddenly grinned. "Remus won't tell me, he says I'll just tell everyone in sight and then it won't be a secret any more."

"Remus sounds correct," Harry observed, putting his bag on his bed and unpacking his tent. He got out his wand, paused, and looked at Sirius. "Is magic okay here outside of term time?"

"It's close enough to Hogwarts that it's okay," Sirius reassured him, and Harry used a quick spell to erect his tent instead of doing it the long way. "Speaking of magic, though, I've checked with Dumbledore and there's a good spot for learning fire spells a half mile or so towards the sea from the castle itself."

Kreacher appeared with an unassuming _pop_. "Master? Polite dragon? There is a small owl bumping into the back of the fire place at the town house."

"That sounds like Ginny's owl," Harry observed. "Pigwidgeon must have just missed us."

"Kreacher will put Floo powder in the fireplace," Kreacher decided, and popped away again.

Harry and Sirius exchanged glances, then looked towards the bedroom door.

True to form, Pigwidgeon came ping-pong-ing his way through the house, bouncing off walls and doorframes, and came to an excited halt in a cloud of feathers just in front of Harry.

"Um, well done," Harry said, removing the letter, and Ginny's owl went zooming off towards the window.

"He does know it's hundreds of miles back down to Devon, right?" Sirius asked.

"He'll probably make it before the end of the day," Harry guessed, opening the letter.

Ginny had apparently decided that Ron had forgotten to pass on any of the OWL and NEWT results from their family, and had taken it upon herself to do it. It seemed that Fred and George had each earned four OWLs – a matched set of Charms, Defence, Potions and Transfiguration.

It didn't escape Harry's attention that those were among the most practical of the classes at Hogwarts, and presumably the only ones where their considerable practical skill overcame the very real difficulty of getting the two of them to actually sit down and write answers to questions on sheets of paper.

As for Percy, he naturally passed every single NEWT he'd taken, and had also qualified to be able to Apparate. That was one of those things Harry really wanted to be able to do (assuming it would work for him at all) and he felt briefly jealous before wondering something else.

"Can you Apparate in an Animagus form?" he asked.

Sirius frowned, turned into Padfoot, and disappeared with a _crack_. (In that order.)

"That's a yes, then," Harry decided, after thinking about it a bit, and finished the letter.

It seemed the World Cup Final was going to be between Ireland and Bulgaria. Harry knew a bit about Ireland – or, at least, he knew what Seamus had said about Ireland, and he knew the version of Ireland usually mentioned by American writers, which might not be quite the same thing – but he had to admit he wasn't very sure about Bulgaria.

Then Padfoot appeared again, returned to being Sirius (though not necessarily to no longer being silly), and raised his wand to cast a spell.

"Just realized I should have put an Anti-Apparition Jinx on the house," he explained. "Silly of me, really. Anyway, if you've got no urgent homework, let's go and set things on fire."

"It's still a month until I go back to Hogwarts," Harry said. "And I've done all my homework anyway."

"Well, there you go, then," Sirius replied. "Time to go and set things on fire."

He paused. _"Responsibly._ Time to _responsibly_ set things on fire. And remember, starting a forest fire is _irresponsible."_

* * *

AN:

* * *

Another month down.

This is indeed about the time _Council of Wyrms_ was released, which is one of those things that gets quite an ear-perk from a Black-Backed Bookwyrm...


	51. A Festival Of Fyre

Harry was really quite impressed by the fire.

Oh, perhaps it shouldn't have _been_ impressive, because it was just a little smouldering patch of undergrowth about two feet across. But the whole practice area had been hit with so many fire spells over the past week that there shouldn't really have been anything _left_ to burn.

"_Aguamenti,"_ Sirius said, twirling his wand a little to make it a spray of water instead of a jet. That put out more or less the whole of the fire patch at once, and he wiped his brow.

"Good thing we stopped that one before it burned down the whole forest," he quipped, and Harry chuckled. "All right, should we try again?"

"I think I'll do some of the smaller fire spells first," Harry demurred, and Sirius stepped back as Harry raised his wand again.

"_Incendio,"_ he began, casting it to be a jet of flame, then cast it a second time as a wider spray.

The way you could make the same spell do slightly different things was really sort of interesting, and Harry _did_ wonder whether there was a way of making one of the simple year-one or year-two spells do the sort of thing that the really complex year-five spells could do instead, if you were good enough at it.

"_Hyacinthum Flammare_," Harry went on, giving his wand a flick so the bluebell flames came out as a kind of blob – the same way Sirius had altered his water spell a minute before. They splashed on the ground and spread out a little, but of course there was no danger of _that_ spell starting a big fire even if everything had still been unburned and dry. Then the dragon lowered his wand, and the next four fire spells came from his mouth instead – each one a different kind of fire breath, shaped or intense or just differently coloured.

(Harry wasn't quite sure why there was a spell specifically to make bright pink flames that were otherwise the same as normal fire, but there it was.)

Then he paused, rolling his neck a bit, and took a deep breath.

"_Infernus,"_ he declared, and exhaled sharply.

All the other fire spells Harry had learned to cast were fundamentally agreeable, if you could use that sort of word for them. You had to be a bit careful with some of them to make sure it did what you wanted instead of something slightly different, perhaps, and they weren't quite safe – they did involve making fire, after all – but if you didn't put enough effort into them they just collapsed and didn't really burn anything.

Fiendfyre was different. You didn't _have_ to put effort into making sure Fiendfyre was hot, because it was _always _hot, but you _did_ have to be very specific about what you wanted the spell to do and concentrate on that as much as possible. Because Fiendfyre was a _hungry_ spell, fire that was intensified and refined until it was more like fire than fire itself.

Harry did his best to concentrate on making it a simple jet of flame, a stream like the sort of fire breath Smaug had, but every little eddy and curl of flame took on a life of its own and turned from a ripple in the stream of flame into a separate shape into a griffin spreading its wings and heading for freedom, and by the time Harry had concentrated on that one and brought it back into line there was another coil trying to escape.

Most of the force of the jet went crashing into the layer of pebbles they were using as a target, sending a few of them flying, but after about five seconds Sirius shook his head sharply.

"Stop!" he called, and Harry stopped straight away. The Fiendfyre tried to escape, a dozen separate tendrils of flame billowing outwards looking for something to burn, and Harry and Sirius smothered each one in bluebell flames before they could get very far.

Harry hadn't noticed one of the strands of his main jet making a bid for freedom, and Sirius cast another three spells on that particular bit of escaping Fiendfyre before finally declaring it neutralized.

"You're definitely getting better," Sirius assured him, gesturing towards the pebble bed. Harry stepped closer to have a look, bemused as always by how the Fiendfyre had actually set some of the stones _on fire_, and they watched as it slowly burned out and left a little patch of sullenly glowing glass.

Then Nora flew overhead with a _whoosh_.

"Hello!" she said brightly, turning around and coming down to land. "Are you doing fire practice?"

"Sort of," Harry replied. "It's magic fire, and it's dangerous. You should probably make sure you don't get too close."

Nora considered that, and nodded.

"Fire burns things on the ground," she said sagely. "People like their things not being on fire."

Harry chuckled, but that did make him wonder.

"How long does Fiendfyre take to burn out?" he asked, looking over at Sirius. "If it's got nothing to work on, I mean."

"Well, we've seen how even if it's got something to burn it can eventually burn out, as long as what it's burning is stone," Sirius mused. "I think we'd need to test it out."

* * *

Fortunately, it turned out that Harry could _not_ in fact set the sky on fire.

* * *

"That looked like it didn't go as well?" Sirius called, as Harry flew towards him. "Your last few were almost controlled, but then that one didn't – there were all those coils that went everywhere."

"That was deliberate," Harry explained, flaring his wings and alighting on the sidecar.

Sirius' magic motorbike wasn't as fast as a really good modern broom, but it was better for giving a good rest place for a dragon. Which was nice.

"I thought maybe all the flames were because I was losing concentration," Harry went on, waving a wing for emphasis. "Then I realized that maybe I was getting _slightly_ bored trying to do a fire breath blast that was as simple and uncomplicated as possible – but doing a more interesting one helped. I might try doing one of the flame sweeps they have in the Pern books, too."

"Well, if it works, it works," Sirius decided. "Let's give it a few more goes, and if it works we can tell Dumbledore and see what he says?"

Harry nodded. "Maybe I should do at least one time where I fly down and try and hit the pebble bed again, too?"

"Perhaps only _after_ Dumbledore's involved," Sirius decided.

* * *

It was another day of practicing before Harry and Sirius decided that Harry was good enough to ask Dumbledore, and Harry had the feeling he'd never really be _great_ with Fiendfyre, but he didn't really need to be for what they were going to do with it.

It had at least been kind of interesting to watch when they went down to the beach for a quick experiment at the end of the eleventh of August, and Harry had briefly managed to set the sea on fire. The jet of Fiendfyre had plunged into the water and sent up a plume of steam, but it had also separated into a hundred bubbles that floated to the surface and burst to look like a big burning oil slick as they joined up.

There'd been bright yellow flames the colour of street lamps dancing on top of the Fiendfyre slick before both burned out, and Harry suspected that the reason for the bright yellow was something to do with Chemistry.

Maybe it was sodium? Harry remembered that some metals burned or even exploded in water, but he didn't think Fiendfyre was just sodium.

Rather than send a Patronus, they wrote a letter. Sirius wanted it to be full of all sorts of spy-speak stuff like 'we think we have a solution to the jewellery problem' and 'the Riddle riddle may be solved' but Harry said that that was silly because they could just say that they thought Harry was good enough with Fiendfyre now without saying what it was for.

It wasn't as if anyone close enough to Hogwarts to intercept a letter on the way to Dumbledore's office could possibly have _missed_ Harry flying around shooting out big blasts of flame, though in a way it was fortunate that Harry had an excuse for it. (The excuse for it was that he was a dragon, which wasn't an especially complicated excuse but had the great merit of being entirely true.)

The only slight snag had been Hedwig. When Harry had told her there was a job for her she was quite enthusiastic, but when Harry told her that the letter only had to go as far as Dumbledore's office she'd just peered out the window (where the towers of Hogwarts were visible within walking distance) then given Harry a _look_.

Hedwig was quite good at _looks_.

"I know, girl," Harry said, giving her a quick stroke. "But you're the one I can trust to get it there – and I've got a letter I want to send Dean as well to check on our plans for the World Cup, so I'll send you off with that tomorrow?"

After a moment Hedwig accepted that Harry wasn't just taking the mickey, and took flight with a near-silent whirr of wings.

Harry watched her go, then Sirius called him into the lounge. There was something on the radio he thought Harry might like to listen to.

* * *

What Sirius had found was a remarkably funny program made up entirely of comedy sketches. It was sometimes a bit baffling but reliably very funny, especially in the soap bit where one of the performers (whose name kept changing, unless that was the other one) confessed to the other that he'd been having an affair with the very same person he was confessing to.

Neither Sirius nor Harry could stop giggling at 'You've been sleeping with me behind my back?', even after the program ended, and they were most of the way through acting it over a mirror to Remus when there was a knock on the door.

Sirius glanced at a completely different mirror to the one they'd been speaking to Remus over, was apparently satisfied, and went to get the door.

"Sorry, Remus," Harry said. "I think we've spoiled the punchline."

"_It doesn't matter, Harry, I'm sorry to have missed it,"_ Remus told him, smiling. _"Is there going to be another episode? I'll have to come over and listen to it with you."_

Harry picked up the _Radio Times_, then remembered it only covered one week. "Um… it says part one of two, and usually that means there's another one next week at the same time."

"_That's the eighteenth…"_ Remus said, frowning now. _"I'm afraid it looks like we'll miss it, that's the day of the World Cup."_

"I'll ask Dean if he knows a way to save it," Harry decided, then looked up as Dumbledore came in.

"Ah, Harry, how wonderful to see you here," Dumbledore said, taking in the whole of the room. His broad smile made Harry look around the room again, and sort of see it with new eyes – a cozy sort of place with two sofas and two armchairs, plenty of blankets and cushions, and settling into a sort of comfortable lived-in feeling.

Partly that was the dragon-shaped dent on the sofa, one which Harry was currently lying in.

"I do like it," Harry admitted. "It can be a bit distracting, though. I'm sort of glad I can spend a month at Privet Drive to do my homework and then a month here to _not_ do my homework, though."

"A wise approach, Harry," Dumbledore complimented him, nodding to the mirror as well. "I trust all is well, Remus?"

"_That's right, Headmaster,"_ Remus agreed. _"But I can go if you'd rather I didn't listen in."_

"I leave the choice entirely up to you," Dumbledore invited him, then sat in one of the armchairs and placed a small bag on the table.

The first thing he withdrew was Riddle's diary, and then Slytherin's locket – both of them still looking just as they had done when Harry had handed them over.

"I am now certain I know the location of a third," Dumbledore added, as they all contemplated the two Horcruxes. "Since I believe Harry is available tomorrow, I would be delighted if he would accompany me – though I fear it will be quite a long journey, since of course we cannot simply Apparate. But that is for tomorrow – and not until after breakfast – and tonight we are concerned with these."

"We're not going to destroy them in here, are we?" Sirius asked. "I don't want to lose this house, there's not an unlimited number of them in Hogsmeade."

"You are of course correct, Sirius," Dumbledore agreed. "It would be terribly bad manners to incinerate your house, as I am sure Harry agrees."

Harry nodded emphatically. "I don't want to burn Sirius' things, and my things are in here as well."

"Commendably practical," the headmaster approved. "I suggest we should go and do our work somewhere rather less flammable, as such things are measured. However, first I believe I should mention what I intend we _do_."

One of his long fingers indicated the diary, stopping just short of tapping it. "This one, I think, we should use to perform the first test, which is whether Fiendfyre is in fact able to destroy a Horcrux."

"You're not sure?" Sirius said, a little surprised.

"Odd as it may seem, Sirius, most of the books about Horcruxes were written by dark wizards," Dumbledore chuckled. "And nobody who ever created a Horcrux of their own then tried to find out how they could then destroy it and thus be killed – or, if ever they did discover the truth of the matter, they were most unhelpfully reluctant to write it down."

Harry had to admit that that made sense. It made him wonder how Gandalf had been sure what you had to do to destroy the Ring of Power, but perhaps that was just what happened if you were a several-hundred-year-old wizard. Instead of just a one-hundred-year-old wizard like Dumbledore.

"The locket, meanwhile," Dumbledore continued. "Is what we should use to see how _much_ destruction is required. It may be that we would prefer for some of Riddle's Horcruxes to not be completely destroyed, for reasons of historical value."

"I'm not sure I'm good enough at Fiendfyre to only destroy it a little bit," Harry admitted, then frowned. "Oh – Sirius, should we ask Kreacher to come along?"

Sirius frowned. "It's odd. Before we found the locket I'd have wanted as little to do with him as possible, but now… yes."

"A marvellous tale of friendship," Dumbledore told Sirius pleasantly.

He got up, putting both Horcruxes back in his bag. "I must confess I do not know where we are going, however. If you would direct me?"

* * *

They went back to the place Harry had been doing the Fiendfyre practice on the ground, because everything that could possibly be burned by anything _less_ fire-y than Fiendfyre had already been burned, and Harry got to work.

Tom Riddle's Diary went first, and Harry was more than a little relieved when the gout of intense flame just washed over it and set it alight as if it were an ordinary book – except, that was, for the shriek of pain and the gouts of ink it sprayed out as it burned down to nothingness, which didn't seem normal.

Harry had never burned a normal book before. Maybe that was what happened, though he didn't think that was very likely.

Then Sirius called Kreacher, and the old elf watched as they did the experiments Dumbledore had been talking about.

His first idea was just to hit the chain with Fiendfyre, to see if that would count, but while it did destroy the chain the test Dumbledore did showed that it still counted as a Horcrux. Then Harry fired a second blast, this one much longer and controlled as tightly as he could manage, to slowly move it across to lightly scorch the top of the locket itself.

There was no luck that time either, and finally Harry just incinerated the locket and had done with it. As it turned out, a shriek and odd black liquid was what you had to expect when a _Horcrux_ was destroyed, not a book, which set Harry's mind at rest somewhat.

Then Kreacher started hugging Harry and didn't stop for at least half an hour.

* * *

Dumbledore's plan for getting to the place where he thought another Horcrux was hidden involved the use of a Thestral – one of the strange looking bat-horses that you could only see if someone had died while you were watching. It seemed that they were one of the many ways Dumbledore had for travelling long distances, though (as he explained to Harry) they would need to place the Thestral in question under a Disillusionment Charm so that Muggles did not notice.

This would also mean Dumbledore would have to be under a Disillusionment charm, of course, because otherwise Muggles would notice _him_.

Harry asked why Dumbledore couldn't just borrow Sirius' motorbike and go that way, and the result was quite odd. Dumbledore had considered, and frowned, and then brightened and asked if Sirius could come with them as well – as they would now all be taking the Floo to the village of Appleby, and travelling from there to a place called Little Hangleton.

The trip was really quite fun. Sirius and Dumbledore simply drove the bike along the road – Sirius astride the motorbike itself and Dumbledore seated calmly in the side car with his long beard streaming out behind him like a scarf – and Harry flew overhead, secure in the knowledge that Muggles would overlook him and able to closely follow the two adults as they drove north.

It was quite a long way from Appleby to Little Hangleton, but the challenge of keeping up with Sirius and Dumbledore meant it wasn't as bad as it might have been, and when Harry thought about it he was fairly sure he was able to fly faster now than he'd been able to manage a few years ago.

He did relish the prospect of eventually being able to Apparate, though.

Finally, after going past an airfield on the right side of the road, they turned off the A1 and went through (or over) gradually smaller and smaller villages and past farm fields. The countryside looked familiar, a bit, and Harry puzzled over why until Dumbledore directed Sirius to park by the side of a country lane.

"A quite invigorating journey!" Harry heard Dumbledore announce, as he flew down to ground level and as Sirius turned off the ignition. "It was quite pleasant to be able to simply experience the wind in my hair without any of the tiresome necessity of steering. My thanks, Sirius."

Harry flared his wings, slowing almost to a halt relative to the ground, and dropped onto all four legs. As he folded his wings up and furled them, he raised a paw. "Um… Professor? This looks sort of like what the land around Neville's house looks like. Are we closer to Longbottom House than to Appleby?"

"I believe we might very well be, Harry," Dumbledore said, after a moment's thought. "Perhaps that means we will be able to take a different route back to Hogwarts."

Sirius sniggered as he got off his bike. "This is one of the problems with everything important being Unplottable. We're just not very good at reading maps."

* * *

Sirius moved his bike over next to the hedge so it was out of the way, picking the whole thing up with ease, then turned a little switch once it was firmly in place.

"That turns off the thing that makes it light," he explained. "Without that it weighs about two and a half tons, so good luck to whoever tries to carry it off."

With that out of the way, Dumbledore led them down a track. There was a large manor house visible in the distance, and Harry frowned at it.

"Is that where Riddle came from, Professor?" he asked.

"In a sense, though not in the sense you are thinking of," Dumbledore replied. "Tom's mother was a witch by the name of Merope who died about the time of his birth, and he grew up in an orphanage. _That_ is the home of his father, a Muggle also called Tom Riddle – or perhaps it would be better to say it _was_ the home of his father."

"Did this Muggle die as well, then?" Sirius said. "I can't imagine Moldy Voldy being raised by a Muggle, or not a decent one anyway."

"Alas, Tom's childhood was not a pleasant one," Dumbledore replied. "But his father did not die until the summer before Tom's sixth year, when he visited his father and paternal grandparents and killed them."

That sounded terrible, but it also raised a question for Harry.

"Was he an orphan only once he did that?" he asked. "I'm not sure how the word orphan works."

"To the best of my knowledge, an orphan is someone without living parents to care for them," Dumbledore replied, as they took a right turn. "We should be careful, however, for we are nearly at the home of the Gaunt family."

Sirius got his wand ready, and Dumbledore smiled a little. "Do not worry, Sirius, there is nobody home. Alas, the only surviving Gaunt was convicted for the murder of the Riddles and placed in Azkaban."

"Blimey, Azkaban's full of people who didn't do it," Sirius muttered darkly. "So he's a wizard, then?"

"He is indeed, Sirius," Dumbledore confirmed. "And I am doing my best to secure his release, but it is a complicated situation because Tom has Memory Charmed him quite thoroughly – he honestly believes he is guilty."

While they digested that, Dumbledore paused and looked at the surrounding terrain.

"I believe… yes, this way," he decided, turning abruptly to the left and leading them down a side passage.

* * *

The Gaunt family home was… not very impressive.

It was sort of a shack, more than anything, and there was a dead snake nailed to the door. It was also surrounded in grass more than three feet high, and Harry had to stick his neck up a bit to make sure he had a good view.

"We should be careful," Dumbledore announced, raising his wand. _"Transpectus."_

Harry's view of the shack went ever so slightly hazy.

"Dear me," Dumbledore added. "That would have been ever so unpleasant. One wonders why he felt the need to do it."

"I don't follow," Sirius admitted.

"A dreadfully nasty curse, one which would thin the blood of anyone who passed over the threshold," Dumbledore narrated, pushing his wand forwards tip-first and then yanking back as if he were pulling a trout. Then he brought it down in a diagonal sweep, raising a cloud of sparks from something invisible just at the door of the shack. "And I believe that one would cause the snake to animate and bite the victim, very unpleasant."

"I'm starting to think my brother got off lightly," Sirius said. "And he _died_."

"And what a loss it was," Dumbledore mused, making another gesture – this one a kind of winding-up motion, as if he were rewinding an old-fashioned clock. _"Finite Incantatem."_

The dispelling spell flashed out, and the haze vanished.

"There we go," Dumbledore said, sounding pleased.

"Are you sure we shouldn't just destroy the whole shack, Professor?" Harry asked, just in case.

"I fear that would probably be noticed," Dumbledore replied, after thinking about it. "And as I am sure you have noticed, the more that Fiendfyre burns the harder it is to cause it to _stop_. It would not be terribly polite to the fine people of the Hangleton area to set their whole parish alight."

That sounded sensible to Harry, and the three of them advanced on the Shack together.

* * *

Inside it was just as ratty and dilapidated as it had been on the outside, and filthy as well – the windows were completely opaque, and both Sirius and Harry quickly cast wand-lighting charms to give them a bit of visibility. The ceiling was choked with cobwebs, a collapsed table had spilled pots onto the floor long enough ago that a film of dust covered them, and there were bottles scattered across the floor.

Harry picked one up, sniffed it, and decided right there and then that there were some things even _he_ would not eat.

"I wonder if this place has ever seen a _Scourgify_ charm," Sirius said, boggling at the mess. "Grimmauld Place was better than this… I suppose this has been abandoned for much longer, though."

"Actually, the only difference from when Morfin Gaunt lived here more than fifty years ago is that the table has collapsed," Dumbledore observed lightly. "It might be a useful History of Magic project about how beyond a certain point it simply does not get more dirty, though I imagine many of our teenaged students are familiar with much the same thing."

Harry sniggered, though he had to admit he wasn't exactly very tidy himself. He always knew where everything _was_ without needing to tidy it all away, and it was usually on the floor in a big pile he slept on.

That was dragons for you.

Or possibly teenagers? Dudley did the same sort of thing, except he slept on his bed.

Dumbledore told them all to stop, then cast the _Transpectus_ spell again. This time the haze was more pronounced, more focused on an area of floor, and it took almost three minutes until Dumbledore decided he was done and used a wordless spell to raise one of the stone slabs that made up the floor.

Beneath was a small box, and Harry leaned a little closer as Sirius lifted it out of the hole and put it on the floor.

"So far as I have been able to determine, this will be Tom's second Horcrux," Dumbledore noted, and opened the box.

Inside was a ring, one with a gold band and a black stone, and Dumbledore picked it up to inspect closely.

"My word," he said, softly, and turned it around to put it on his finger.

Harry reacted automatically, one of his wings whipping out to knock the ring out of Dumbledore's hands.

There was _no way_ putting on a ring that was also a Horcrux and was therefore basically _The One Ring_ could _ever_ be a good thing, and in case there was some kind of spell on it like there was on the One Ring Harry decided to destroy it immediately.

"_Infernus!"_ he called out, exhaling sharply and focusing as much as he'd ever done in his life, and a thin jet of Fiendfyre roared out of his mouth and caught the falling ring just as it bounced off the ground.

There was a shriek, and a spray of black ichor, and what clattered to the floor for the second bounce was just the black stone connected to a quarter-circle gold band.

* * *

For a long moment, all three wizards just sort of stared. The remaining gold band of the ring was still burning, ignited by Harry's jet of fire, and those edges were softening and dripping a little.

"What was that for?" Sirius eventually asked.

"I thought-" Harry began, about to explain his idea about the One Ring, but Sirius interrupted him.

"Not you!" he said, then rounded on the Headmaster. "Dumbledore – what were you _doing__?_ We all agreed you're not supposed to use a Horcrux, and you use a ring by wearing it!"

"You are correct, Sirius," Dumbledore said, sitting down hard on the nearest old chair. It creaked alarmingly, and Dumbledore sighed.

"I was not sure," he admitted. "Morfin's memory was not clear. And when I saw it… Sirius, do you remember the Tale of-"

"Um, Professor? Sirius?" Harry said, wings flaring out in emphasis. "I don't want to interrupt, but the shack is sort of on fire."

Harry's Fiendfyre jet had gone under the bed, splashing across the stone, and while at first it had just burned stone and cobwebs that had let it gain strength and grow.

Now a shape of flame like a hydra roared out from under the bed, five heads reaching around to consume the detritus of the shack and feed off it, and Harry backed away a little while wondering what they could do.

"_Frigus nivalis!"_ Dumbledore shouted hoarsely, and a torrent of white ice and snow erupted from the tip of his wand. It hit the fire hydra hard, sending up a mighty hiss of steam and smothering it in cold, and when the spell finally stopped there was a kind of white snowbank covering half the shack.

Harry let out a sigh of relief, then noticed that there was steam rising from beneath the snow – and a sullen red glow that was getting brighter and brighter.

"Get the stone, Harry," Dumbledore requested, and Harry picked it up now that the gold it was connected to had stopped burning. It still felt a little soft and warm, and Harry supposed that if he wasn't a dragon it would probably be quite painful, but that was probably why Dumbledore had told him to do it in the first place.

"What do we do now?" Sirius asked, eyeing the snowbank warily.

"As you may recall from when we discussed this spell previously, Fiendfyre may best be overcome by dilution," Dumbledore told him, rising to his feet once more. "There is quite a lot of it here, so there is a lot of dilution to do, but I can at least slow down how quickly it expands as well."

He flicked his wand in a silent version of what Harry thought was the Flame-Freezing Charm, but instead of finishing by pointing it at himself he held his wand straight up in the air.

Harry decided the best way he could help was by using as much Bluebell Flames as possible.

* * *

It took ten long minutes, with Dumbledore refreezing the room with a huge ice spell whenever it seemed necessary, but finally the Gaunt Shack was no longer on fire and all three of them had got out without injury.

"Nobody missing anything?" Dumbledore asked. "Harry, I hope your wings remain pleasantly un-scorched?"

Harry checked, finding they were fine, and nodded. "Yes, Professor."

"Then I would venture to say we all did well," Dumbledore decided.

"Mostly," Sirius said, still mulish, and Dumbledore held up a hand in a little gesture.

"Though I must own up to my mistake. Harry, if you could show us the stone?"

Harry did so, and noticed that almost all the remaining gold from the ring had hardened again in a shape that had moulded against his paw. It took some care to extract it, and once he had he held it up for Dumbledore and Sirius to see.

"If you recall the Tale of the Three Brothers, Sirius?" Dumbledore asked.

"...wait, what?" Sirius said, baffled. "How is that relevant?"

Harry had to admit he was quite baffled as well. Neville had mentioned the Tale of the Three Brothers once, but in about the same way that Harry would have talked about the Three Little Pigs, and all the other times Harry had run into it were more or less the same.

"It is my impression that _this_ is the Resurrection Stone," Dumbledore clarified. "Though of course I do not think we can test it."

"Wait, hold on, the Three Brothers is a story about being careful what you ask for, isn't it?" Sirius said. "The Wand made it so everyone wanted the wand and so the first brother got murdered, the Stone made the second brother so depressed he hanged himself, and the Cloak made the third brother safe from death but only as long as he spent his whole life under it."

Harry started toying with the oddly shaped gold. "What are they, again? I've never read the story."

Dumbledore suggested that they should head back to the motorbike, and promised to explain on the way.

* * *

What Dumbledore said gave Harry a lot to think about.

Apparently the Wand was just the best wand in the world, enormously powerful, but also much more easy to win over than another wand. It simply would not work correctly for you if you were not the one who had somehow defeated the previous owner, so you could lose the ability to use it properly by something as simple as being tricked, but so long as you _were_ the correct user it was as if it were always your best wand and then a bit better than that.

The Cloak was the best of invisibility cloaks, which never wore out, and when Dumbledore explained that it made Harry sort of wonder about his own inherited Invisibility Cloak. He'd hardly even used it, but if Sirius was right then maybe that was sort of _symbolically_ the right choice.

Or something.

And the Stone was completely different, because rather than just being a better version of something it was able to do a whole new magical effect – it was able to bring back a sort of ghostly version of someone who'd died.

It sounded a lot like the Mirror of Erised, though, and Harry didn't think that was a good thing for it to sound like. But it could probably still be used sort of safely?

Harry did understand why Dumbledore had been so shocked, though, and why he'd tried to put on the Ring – he'd simply forgotten the danger.

* * *

Once they were all back at Hogwarts, Dumbledore invited them up to his office.

"I have some encouraging words," he said, once they were sat down. "Encourage. Encouraging. Encouragement."

Harry tried not to react, but he knew he'd failed, and Sirius made a sort of strangled noise that was a bit like a giggle trying not to escape.

"In truth, however, we have done some very good work today," Dumbledore went on. "I do not know how many Horcrux that Tom made – that is the sort of decision he must have made himself and kept secret, and one doubts that he would consent to being asked the question – but surely the loss of three of them in one day must count as a significant victory."

He steepled his fingers together. "Alas, now we find ourselves without many very good leads to discern what other Horcruxes were made. I believe that he came into possession of the Cup of Helga Hufflepuff at the same time as the Locket of Salazar Slytherin, and it would be strange if he did _not_ make a Horcrux out of that, but beyond that we have no real information."

"Well, we do know a pattern," Sirius pointed out. "I'm not sure how the Diary fits in, but all the others are objects belonging to the Hogwarts Founders, aren't they? What other objects have been lost?"

"Lost or not lost," Dumbledore corrected slightly. "There is the Lost Diadem, which I would say is certainly lost, and there is the Sword of Gryffindor, which has not been seen since sixteen thirty-seven, but Gryffindor's Hat _is_ found and it is in this very office."

Rising from his seat, Dumbledore approached one of the bookcases – atop which, snoozing lightly, was the Sorting Hat.

Harry held his breath. He didn't like the idea of having to destroy the Hat – it had seemed quite pleasant, and it was important for Hogwarts. And surely if there was a bit of Tom Riddle in the hat then it would have had an effect over the last several years?

As Dumbledore was just about to cast a spell, Harry coughed uncertainly. "Um, Professor – if the Sorting Hat _was_ one of Tom's Horcruxes, when would he have had a chance to make it? I don't think you ever gave it to him, did you?"

"Indeed I did not," Dumbledore agreed. "Nor was there a chance for him to have a hold of it."

He cast the detection spell anyway, the same one that had identified the Locket, and then gave the Sorting Hat an affectionate pat.

"It seems we shall still be hearing from our fine Hat for many years to come," he said pleasantly. "As for Gryffindor's Sword, I must admit I doubt whether Tom could even hold it; the sword is said to only appear in a time of great need and for a true Gryffindor, and Tom was certainly not the latter."

He turned back to Sirius. "Though I must confess I fear for Ravenclaw's Lost Diadem, if it still exists. And if Tom could find it in the first place."

"It'd be a shame to have to destroy so many of the Founders' artefacts," Sirius said. "Even if we could find them in the first place."

"Alas, though I would say that Tom is the one who has destroyed them," Dumbledore mused. "They were not meant to hold his soul, after all."

After contemplating that, and making his way back over to his desk, Dumbledore smiled. "But it would be terribly foolish to be worried about such things all the time. I make it a point to set aside an hour of every day for whatever worrying must be done, and then I can go through the whole rest of the day knowing that my worrying is properly scheduled."

Harry wasn't sure if Dumbledore actually _meant_ that, but even if he didn't it was probably a good point anyway.

"Now," the Headmaster went on, with a mildly puzzled expression. "Tell me, do either of you know why it is that everyone has been talking about Quidditch all summer?"

* * *

AN:

* * *

It's been a bad week for Tom Riddle.

Not, of course, that he knows it.

(And to explain something that confused a few people in the previous chapter, the "Snitch" name was a suggestion that Ginny did not adopt.)


	52. Big Game Dragon

"How hard it was to organize all this World Cup stuff makes my head spin," Sirius said, as they listened to some classical music on Radio Three.

Harry looked up, interested. "I didn't know you were involved."

"I wasn't," Sirius told him. "I just happen to know, because I was buying the tickets for us all to go."

Harry started to say thank you – not for the first time, but he was still grateful so it seemed polite – but Sirius waved him down. "I told you, I don't mind. Honestly, it'd be actually _hard_ for me to spend all my money even if I was trying – I can't go and buy a Caribbean island or anything, but good tickets to a Quidditch match is nothing."

He chuckled. "It's because of what happened when I was buying them. The wizard looked tired, so I asked him how he was doing, and he told me how much trouble it's all been."

The music on the radio suddenly blared out a loud bassoon note that sounded really quite rude, catching them both by surprise, and after giving the radio a puzzled look Sirius continued.

It seemed that the big problem was simply the difficulty of staging a large sporting event – about the same size as a football World Cup Final, in terms of how many people wanted to come and see it, because Wizards didn't have television – without letting the Muggles know that anything of the sort was going on. Normally when one of those happened in the Muggle world they could just use public transport, but the very idea of large numbers of wizards using public transport made Harry unsure whether he wanted to wince or laugh.

Except for the Muggle-born, and a few exceptions like Sirius (who'd been making an effort to learn over the last couple of years), one wizard on the Tube was usually eye-catching even when they weren't like Hagrid. Imagining thousands of foreign wizards all over London was just asking for the whole Wizarding World to get exposed, and with a _hundred thousand_ wizards coming to Britain the sheer number of odd things happening would be impossible to keep hidden.

(Harry did a bit of maths in his head, thinking about how many witches and wizards there were in the world, and decided that there was probably more than a tenth of the world Wizarding population attending the World Cup.)

So there was a complicated mixture of Portkeys and Apparating and that sort of thing, and people were arriving a few thousand at a time and camping around the stadium. Sirius had got them good tickets so they were only really staying for a day or so before the game, which was nice, and then afterwards they could just head straight back to Dogwarts (or home, for the others) if they wanted.

Assuming, of course, that they didn't need to go straight to Kings Cross.

"_And that was Hayden's Symphony number 93,"_ the Radio 3 announcer announced, as the music ended. _"One of the symphonies with no nickname, probably because the only real option is a little too embarrassing. Next, we'll be listening to the _Hebrides_ by Mendelssohn."_

"I bet Trouble and Strife would like that one," Sirius chuckled. "Anyway, Harry… do you want to go straight from here to the World Cup stadium? I assume they probably have a fireplace linked to the Floo somewhere there – probably several, really. Or you could meet your friends and go with them."

Harry thought about that, and about what he knew of how his friends were planning on going to the Cup. Hermione and Dean were just going to meet up with Ron and go from the Burrow, but Neville's Aunt was going to Apparate him there Side-Along, so going with his friends really meant going to the Burrow.

"Do you know where the stadium is?" he asked.

"Somewhere in Devon, I think," Sirius replied, thinking about it. "I couldn't point to it on a map, though. It's Unplottable."

"How does the Marauder's Map work, then?" Harry asked. "If Hogwarts is Unplottable."

"That's a very good question," Sirius said. "Someone should really look into finding out the answer one of these days."

Harry blinked. "You don't know?"

"In case you haven't noticed, Harry, I was not exactly the most focused pupil," Sirius pointed out. "A bit like Trouble and Strife, really. James, Remus, , and I sort of went straight from the idea of the Map to starting to map things out, and because it worked we never thought about the Unplottability thing."

Harry was quite impressed by Sirius' ability to pronounce an empty space.

His Dogfather shrugged. "I mean, I _assume_ Hogwarts actually is Unplottable instead of nobody having bothered to try to mark it on a map. But then again, look what we've found out about technology."

Harry had to agree, because there were several battery-operated gadgets at Grimmauld Place. Dogwarts only had the radio, because it was close enough to Hogwarts that whatever made televisions work made televisions not work, but there was no such problem at Grimmauld Place and they were both wondering in an idle sort of way whether they could get a power supply and a games console like one of Dudley's ones.

"I think I'd rather go to the Burrow," Harry decided. "It'd be nice to visit it again, it's somehow the most wizard-y place I've ever been – and that includes Hogwarts. And Dogwarts."

"I do like it," Sirius admitted. "Grimmauld Place is much more my style now we watch television there, but it's still a bit boring."

He stood, shifted to Padfoot, stretched doggishly and then shifted back to human again. "Want help writing the letter?"

"I'll be fine," Harry assured him. "Actually, because Ron's probably in his room but not gone to bed yet, I'll send him a Patronus asking if we can fire call to sort it out tomorrow."

"I should really learn how to do that," Sirius mused. "It's very useful."

"What about if I teach you?" Harry volunteered. "I thought Professor Dumbledore had already taught you, or I'd have offered earlier."

"...he probably would have, if I'd asked," Sirius snorted. "I really should have thought of that."

* * *

Mrs. Weasley was delighted to see Harry, when he Flooed over the day before they were all going to go to the World Cup.

Everyone else was happy to see Harry as well, and he was touched, but Mrs. Weasley was especially happy because of the way that there were so many people staying in the Burrow that they were more or less out of rooms. Harry duly set up his tent in Ron's room for the night, and then Charlie introduced him properly to the last of the Weasley siblings that Harry hadn't met yet.

Bill (or William, as nobody called him) turned out to be laid-back, easy-going, and fun to talk to. Harry sort of got the idea of him as the sort of Prefect that Sirius would actually respect, and that made him wonder just how much Bill was like Prongs had been.

He did his best not to wonder that during the conversation, though, because it wouldn't have been very fair to Bill. It wasn't as if it was hard to be focused on other things, either, because Bill was deeply interested in what Harry and Charlie had found out between them about Nora.

"At work there's a lot of focus on trying to actually train dragons properly," Bill confided. "Unfortunately the best methods they have at the moment aren't very good, or so I'm told, and this idea of being able to actually give dragons _instructions_ is something that Snaphaunce and the others are all very interested in."

"I did hear about dragons at Gringotts," Harry agreed. "What are they like?"

"Good question!" Bill admitted. "I'm in the curse breaking section, so I'm mostly going abroad to break curses on Egyptian or Mayan tombs – that sort of thing. It's just what you hear from the others."

He shrugged. "But even then, a lot of it is secret. They all say having talking dragons would work better though."

"I got approval to do more tests," Charlie told Harry, taking up the thread of the conversation. "To see whether it's something about Hogwarts that makes it work, or how Hagrid and Kettleburn raised Nora – we'll be trying that one in Romania. If it's neither of those, it might just be something about Nora."

Harry had a very good idea what had caused it, but that didn't actually mean he knew what to _say_. Telling them would mean giving away the secret of Empress, and he wasn't sure that would be either a good idea or a polite thing to do.

"Professor Dumbledore and I wondered if it was a ghost teaching Nora overnight," he said, eventually. "We couldn't find the ghost that was doing it, but maybe if you try spending lots of time teaching one of the hatchling dragons Dragonish that would be a good test?"

Charlie frowned, reaching up to toy with a ring in his ear. "That might be a good idea too. We should test as many options as possible."

He brightened. "And if all else fails, we can just call it Hogwarts Weyr."

Harry beamed, and Bill just looked confused. "What?"

"It's a book Harry copied for me. I'll show you," Charlie promised.

* * *

Bright and early the next morning, in fact so early that it didn't really qualify as 'bright', they all got up to go up Stoatshead Hill near the Burrow to catch a Portkey.

Harry had managed to get enough sleep that he was only yawning a little bit at breakfast, but he seemed to be just about the only one. Hermione's eyes looked a bit red, and she was doing a lot better than Dean or Ron (who were almost nodding off over toast) or even Ginny, who spent about half the time yawning.

"How do you even do that?" Ron muttered, staring blearily at Harry. "Get up so early."

"It's so I can read more at night," Harry explained. "I sort of learned how when I was younger, and I'm doing my best to keep it up."

It made sense to him, but Ron just groaned.

"Look, can I get a lift?" he asked. "If I have to walk I'm going to fall over and break my ankle or something."

"Really, Ronald," Mrs. Weasley said, tutting. "How do you think Harry will feel?"

"I won't mind," Harry replied. "Nutkin only weighs about a pound."

"I beg your pardon?" she asked.

"It's me as a squirrel, mum, remember?" Ron asked, then finished off his toast.

A new slice appeared almost immediately, and he shook his head. "No, that's fine, Dobby."

The House-Elf beamed, taking the buttered toast for himself, and spread jam on it before taking the plate to wash it.

"Well, if Harry doesn't mind, I suppose that's fine," Mrs. Weasley decided.

"It's not going to be very Muggle-friendly, is it?" Mr. Weasley asked, worried.

"I can change back once we get to the Portkey," Ron pointed out. "And Muggles don't really pay much attention to squirrels."

"Or crows," Dean suggested.

Hermione snorted. "It's a pity I don't have that excuse."

* * *

Somehow it ended up that Harry was carrying four of their group up the hill – including both Weasley Twins – but it was all right, because all put together they weighed less than one backpack full of library books. It wasn't the sort of thing most people thought of when they thought of the good sides of being an Animagus, but it was still a good side.

More than once, Harry saw Hermione looking longingly down at her legs as they climbed the steep hill – probably wishing she _could_ risk shifting to her other shape – but it turned out that they arrived in good time and happened to meet Cedric and his dad up there as well. Fred and George shifted back to human to offer Cedric a toffee, but (no fool he) the Hufflepuff just told them to try one themselves.

"I'm not going to be eating anything from them for the rest of the summer," Ron muttered.

"At this point I think you should just ignore anything they've helped make," Dean replied, yawning again. "Thanks, Harry, I needed that extra hour or so…"

Then everyone reached out to put a finger or a hand on the Portkey – which had been made out of an old boot – and Mr. Weasley started counting down with all his attention on his watch.

A moment later, Harry was alone on the hill.

"Oh," he said.

* * *

Harry had sort of wondered whether it was like Apparating or not, and there was his answer.

Rummaging in his bag, Harry dug out one of his two-way mirrors and called Sirius to let him know. Sirius promised to let everyone else know what had happened and to send him Hedwig just in case, and then Harry got out his compass and checked which way north was.

At least he had plenty of time to get there, and he took off with only one mild grumble.

* * *

As it turned out, when all the information you actually had on where something was amounted to "a moor somewhere in Devon", it wasn't all that easy to find it even from the air.

The first problem was what actually qualified as a moor. Harry had had the vague idea that to get to a moor you usually went north, but after flying north for about twenty minutes Harry reached the sea and realized he'd have to rethink this.

Fortunately the local library was open, and Harry quickly checked a map and found that he'd ended up in Somerset instead. There was a moor to the west of him, which was Exmoor, but all the other moors were much more towards south Devon or even Cornwall.

Armed with a photocopy of the map in question, Harry contacted Sirius again to discover exactly which moor the Quidditch Stadium was on.

"_Hold on, I'll go and check,"_ Sirius said.

The mirror viewpoint moved, showing Harry a momentary glimpse of a gigantic golden stadium, and Harry heard Sirius' voice made a bit fainter by distance. _"Does anyone actually know where we are?"_

"_The Quidditch World Cup Final, Mr. Black,"_ someone replied.

"_I know that much,"_ Sirius countered. _"I mean where in Britain. What moor."_

"_What more what?"_ the other person said, confused. _"You must realize I'm busy, I can't answer questions that aren't clearly stated."_

Harry tried to stifle his giggles.

"_If I walked ten miles… _that_ way, where would I be?"_ Sirius demanded.

"_Lost,"_ the ministry official said succinctly.

"_Oh, for goodness' sake,"_ Sirius groaned. _"Hold on, Harry, I'll try someone else."_

* * *

Fortunately, the next person Sirius asked was a member of the Falmouth Falcons and actually knew the answer, which was that they were somewhere northeast of Plymouth and thus on Dartmoor.

His question answered, Harry carefully plotted out which direction to fly in and then set off. It was quite a long way, another forty miles or so, and as he flew Dartmoor gradually grew on the horizon and then bulked up into a kind of mass of grass-strewn granite.

Hedwig arrived while he was en route, flying up and around to take a position off his wing, and Harry smiled before focusing more on trying to find where the stadium was going to be. Some things were easier to spot from the air, but other things were harder, and a stadium that was meant to not stand out too much might be hard to spot.

As it turned out, however, a stadium able to seat a hundred thousand people covered all over with gold was quite easily seen from overhead. So that was all right then.

* * *

"There you are, Harry," Mr. Weasley said, as Sirius brought Harry over to their tent plot. "It gave us all quite a fright when you didn't show up – still, not your fault, was it?"

Harry shrugged, and replied that after something that had happened a while ago he had a lot of ways to find where he was meant to go.

Looking around the campsite, Harry was struck by how oddly some of the witches and wizards were dressed. It wasn't that they were dressed as wizards, which could certainly be quite odd, but that they were dressed like wizards trying to be dressed like Muggles. (Or possibly like Muggles trying to be dressed like Muggles who didn't know how Muggles dressed.)

Admittedly Harry wasn't much of an expert on clothes, but he was fairly sure you weren't supposed to wear a raincoat and poncho on a fine sunny morning in August – or a pair of trousers under a petticoat with the ensemble topped off by a kilt.

"Mr. Weasley said we're trying to seem like Muggles," Dean said, noticing how Harry was looking around. "I think this is what happens when most of them have never done Muggle Studies and the rest of them did it back in the nineteen twenties or something."

"Hey, we're doing all right," Fred protested. "Aren't we?"

George nodded. "Of course. After all, if we were wrong we'd know."

"That's not how… um… _knowledge_ works," Hermione said, after a pause of three or four seconds to make sure she knew just how she was going to phrase it.

"It is," Ron countered. "In History of Magic there's _lots_ of questions where I think 'I don't know that'. You can know you don't know something."

"I know, but you can also _not_ know you don't know something," Hermione replied. "If you have the wrong idea about something, you can be really sure of it and still be wrong – like Muggles are about magic, because they don't know."

"That is a good point," Ron admitted, after thinking about it a bit. "Oh, so maybe Fred and George _aren't_ dressed right for Muggles."

Harry thought they didn't look all that bad, really, for wizards dressed as Muggles. If he'd seen them on the streets of London he would have just thought they were teenagers, and teenagers could wear almost anything – if you didn't recognize it, according to the books he'd read, that just meant they were rebelling against something.

"When in doubt, wear a football shirt," Dean advised. "That's what I'd say."

As they kept talking, Harry spotted someone familiar and waved. Neville waved back, and came jogging over to join them.

"Everyone all right?" he asked. "Great-Uncle Algie Apparated here with me about ten minutes ago."

"I got left behind by the Portkey," Harry replied. "But it wasn't all that far to fly so I just came the long way."

"Couldn't we have done Side-Along Apparition, Dad?" Ron asked.

"Not with this many people to bring," Mr. Weasley replied. "Percy, Bill, Charlie and me, that's four Apparaters, and then there's Hermione, Ginny, you, Fred, George and Dean to bring. And we all thought the Portkey would work on Harry."

He looked suddenly uncertain. "We did, didn't we?"

Harry shrugged, having worked through all his mild annoyance on the flight.

"It's almost a pity we're not on Bodmin Moor," Neville said, frowning suddenly. "We're not supposed to do anything that might give us away as being magical, but there's supposed to be a big wild cat on Bodmin Moor."

"Hah," Dean sniggered. "You've only been here ten minutes. Most of the people who are trying to follow the rules aren't very good at them, and a lot of them aren't even bothering."

"I wasn't very impressed with Mr. Malfoy's tent," Hermione added, frowning. "He must know live peacocks aren't normally found on a camp site."

"Well, it's how we get when we're together," Mr. Weasley admitted. "We do like to show off."

* * *

For most of the day, Harry and the others ended up doing people watching – or wizard watching, which Harry thought was the more interesting version because there seemed to be a lot of variety.

That did also mean that a lot of wizards from other countries were seeing Harry in person for the first time, and Harry was glad that his friends were with him because that meant they could take turns answering all the questions that got asked – if, that was, they were in English.

Or basic French for Hermione, which turned out to be helpful for a surprising number of African witches and wizards.

They did meet Percy's new boss, Mr. Crouch, who seemed a bit odd as far as Harry was concerned. He was very well turned out indeed, the sort of wizard who Uncle Vernon would approve of simply because he'd never notice that Mr. Crouch was a wizard at all, but at the same time Harry sort of remembered that Quibbler article about all the Invisibility cloaks.

"Is this a business day or a day off, Mr. Crouch?" Percy asked, looking attentive. "I don't want to bother you if it's not a business day."

"It's certainly not a day off, Weatherby," Mr. Crouch replied, and that made Harry blink in surprise.

He looked at Mr. Weasley, who was the head of an office in the Ministry, and then at Percy Weasley, who looked really very similar all things considered. Not the same, of course, but it should have been an easy enough clue.

"In that case, Mr. Crouch," Percy went on, "I've got the cauldron regulations drafted, for your approval."

Mr. Crouch nodded slightly. "Very good."

Percy took a thick sheaf of papers out of his robes, and began shuffling through them. "And there's the legislation for the entry into the country of dangerous animals, which has been approved by all origin countries for all the animals in question."

"Yes, Weatherby, very efficient," Mr. Crouch said, and Percy separated out a third distinct document.

"There's also this matter of special cross-language classes for below-age foreign visitors to Hogwarts," he explained. "I've got all the details sorted out, but it requires the signature of a departmental head."

Mr. Crouch took it from Percy's hands, flicked through it, and raised an eyebrow. "Romanian origin as well? I didn't realize… well."

"Romania and Bulgaria are very close together," Percy said.

Harry's head was going back and forth like there was a tennis match going on, and every time Mr. Crouch said 'Weatherby' all of Percy's brothers tried not to snigger.

"All seems in order," Mr. Crouch said, and signed at the bottom of the document. "Keep this up and you may end up going places, Weatherby."

"Thank you, sir," Percy replied, taking the documents back. "I do apologize for bothering you on a busy day."

Harry felt like something had happened which he didn't fully understand, but once Mr. Crouch had left again Percy handed the third document to Charlie.

"All approved through the proper channels," he said.

Charlie's eyes bugged out. "You what?"

"Language lessons for below-age foreign visitors," Percy reiterated, with a very slight smile.

"Blimey, Percy, what happened to you over the last few years?" Charlie asked. "You're scary now."

Percy bowed slightly.

Harry still wasn't sure what had happened, but by the sounds of things he'd find out sooner or later.

It was at Hogwarts, after all.

* * *

In the late afternoon they all set off to the pitch. It was quite crowded, with a hundred thousand people needing to get in and get to their seats, and by then everyone was gradually getting more and more excited and Harry didn't get more than a few surprised comments.

Really, though, everyone had sort of stopped bothering to even _try_ and hide the magic by that point, and Harry was fairly sure Hermione could have attended the match as a dinosaur and the only question someone would ask was what team she supported. (For his part Harry was sort of vaguely supporting Ireland because Ireland was covered by the British Ministry for Magic, the whole Irish Independence thing apparently not having mattered much to wizards.)

They had to do a lot of climbing to reach their seats, Sirius leading the way, and when they finally arrived they were only two rows down from the Top Box right up at the pinnacle of the stadium itself. In a Muggle football game they would have been _so_ high that you'd start to wonder if the view was still any good, or if you'd just see the players as little moving dots, but because it was a _Quidditch_ game it was much better to be high up in the air like this instead.

This was the first magical sports stadium Harry had ever seen the inside of, or at least the first one which wasn't just the equivalent of a school sports field, and it was interesting to see how all the things he was used to from a Muggle stadium showed up or didn't. There were no floodlights but instead everything was just sort of well lit by magic, which was much more convenient, and there were three giant chalkboards around the stands which were the magical version of a big screen showing things like the score or adverts or things like that.

It didn't look like there were adverts around the field itself, though, which made sense because there wasn't really any need to go down to the pitch and so nobody would bother looking. And Harry had seen football supporters arranging themselves to spell something out, but there was no sign of anything that coordinated here.

Once he was sitting down, only a little awkwardly – Dean offered to switch to his Animagus form to clear a seat for Harry to lie across, and Harry refused but thanked him – Harry started looking around the stands as people slowly filtered in. Sometimes he spotted a fellow Hogwarts student or someone else he knew in the crowd, like when Professor McGonagall sat just above one of the magic chalkboards, and he was tempted to wave before remembering that his eyesight was much better than normal and so there was no point.

Then a loud voice sounded from just above them, welcoming them to the final of the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup. Harry wasn't quite sure how the maths worked out for there having been four hundred and twenty two world cups if the game hadn't been invented until the eleventh century, but then he decided not to bother wondering about that and pay attention.

* * *

The first part of the World Cup wasn't the actual game itself, but instead a sort of show-off display by the mascots of the two opposing countries.

Bulgaria went first, and their mascots were Veela. Harry had encountered them in one of the magical fiction books he'd read, which meant he knew they were supposed to be extremely beautiful and able to throw fire.

It was sort of an open question in Harry's mind which of the two was going to be more important for their mascot display, because he was fairly sure that the "looking beautiful" thing would only appeal to about half of the crowd, and when they started to dance he felt a little odd but then blinked a few times and it went away.

Sirius just sort of smiled down at the Veela, but Ron, Neville and Dean all looked seriously impressed. Then Dean switched forms, looked distinctly puzzled, and switched back.

"That was weird," he said. "I was really into them until I changed..."

His gaze was drawn back to the dancing Veela, and Harry blinked a few more times in case that oddly fuzzy feeling started to come back again.

"It's how Veela work," Hermione told them, as the dance ended. "They have a kind of magic that makes them very attractive to men – well, most men and some women, apparently. I'm not really sure it's fair to have them as the mascots for Bulgaria, they've just bewitched half the crowd..."

Harry had to admit that that _was_ a bit strange, but then the Irish mascots took the field as well and they turned out to be leprechauns dropping gold everywhere.

So really neither of them was doing the sort of thing that would be considered all right for Muggle mascots, Harry decided, and picked up one of the gold coins to give it a nibble.

It dissolved when he bit into it, which was sort of a shame but did remind him and everyone else that leprechauns didn't create _real_ gold.

* * *

When the actual game started, Harry was really impressed by the speed and coordination of the teams. It was easy to see how they were the finalists at the World Cup, because the Irish Chasers were bouncing the Quaffle one to another to another with a kind of instinctive grace that could only come from really long practice, and the Bulgarians were pressing them hard – hard enough that any of the teams he'd been or seen at Hogwarts would have just come apart, though the Irish team were managing to handle it.

The first goal came in less than a minute, and the second a few minutes later. Part of Harry's attention was on the Snitch, though, which was zooming around at high speed and dodging from place to place with such agility that he kept losing it for a moment.

That had never happened before with a Snitch, and Harry had the distinct feeling that they were using a faster one for this kind of game. Or maybe they used a slower one at school, it could be either way around.

"Hey, Harry, watch it," Ron complained, and Harry lowered his wings sheepishly – realizing he'd been thinking about taking off and catching it himself!

It would probably be best not to do that.

Then the Bulgarian Seeker – Viktor Krum – feinted towards the ground, decoying his Irish counterpart into following him and crashing into it. There were lots of groans, but apparently it wasn't serious (which was what Harry had expected at first, because he'd hit the ground harder than that while learning to fly, but not everyone was a dragon) and the Irish seeker was back in the air after a few minutes.

* * *

"I wouldn't want to be the Bulgarian Keeper right now," Neville said, about half an hour into the game.

"Nor would I, mate," Ron agreed. "I think I could have saved that last one, but I'd have let through the one before that so it's kind of balancing out."

Ireland was already in the lead by a hundred and twenty points and had been scoring nearly one goal every two minutes, despite the quality of the opposition, and it was easy to see that fairly soon the game would become effectively unwinnable for the Bulgarian side.

"What about you, Harry?" Neville added.

"I'd be sort of nervous flying in front of this many people," Harry replied.

"Oh, yeah, good point," Ron agreed. "And I bet if you did play like you usually do you'd get a hundred thousand witches and wizards really angry at you after they spent all that money and camped in a field for days to watch five minutes of Quaffle play and two goals."

Harry's ears flattened slightly, embarrassed. "I'm not really sure, this Snitch is really quick."

"Blimey, you _can_ see it," Ron realized. "What about-"

There was a loud booing, and Ireland got a penalty because the Bulgarian Keeper had elbowed one of the Irish Chasers in the side.

That seemed to set everything off, and over the next ten minutes or so the game got dirtier and dirtier as more and more fouls took place.

Harry knew this wasn't as bad as Quidditch got – it couldn't be, unless someone had been attacked with a sword or attacked by bloodsucking bats or any of five hundred or so utterly crazy things that had all happened at the same World Cup final – but it was bad enough, even worse than the most foul-laden Hogwarts game, as the veela and the leprechauns got in a brawl on the pitch level and one of the Irish players nearly got knocked off her broom.

"Is this what professional Quidditch is normally like?" Harry asked, nudging Ron.

"Shouldn't be," Ron replied, distracted, most of his attention glued to the game. "Most games don't have this many fouls, usually there's just a couple of cases of Blatching and some Stooging and that's about it."

Krum suddenly rolled into a dive towards the ground, aimed directly for the Snitch, and got smacked in the side by a Bludger a moment later. He shook it off, though, and kept diving as the Irish Seeker caught up to him.

For a long moment the two of them were neck and neck as they dropped towards the mascot brawl, and Harry couldn't tell who was going to get the Snitch. Then the Irish Seeker pulled up, and Krum didn't, and hit the ground just as hard as his foe had done earlier in the game.

The _whumph_ was audible even up near the top of the stands.

"Ouch," Neville said faintly. "Do you think he's okay?"

Harry leaned forwards to look closer, and saw Krum raise a hand – a hand holding a glittering Snitch.

His other arm looked broken, perhaps from the landing or from the Bludger, but he'd got the Snitch anyway.

The score, when Harry looked up at the board, was a hundred and seventy to Bulgaria – and a hundred and eighty to Ireland, with the last goal having been scored while the Seekers were actually in their dive.

* * *

"That was better than I thought it was going to be," Dean declared.

"What?" Neville asked, sounding confused. "You thought it wasn't going to be very good?"

"The fouls made it much more entertaining," Dean replied.

They shuffled slowly another step down the long route towards ground level, and Harry thought about that.

"I'm just saying, when you're not really invested in either team, an eventful game is a good game," Dean went on. "A Gryffindor match? Or a Hammers match? I'll get really annoyed when it's a dirty game. But when it's like that it can be more exciting than just a game where everyone follows the rules."

Sirius let out a shout of laughter. "That's what I always used to think! Never wanted to say it, though."

"Football must be really violent," Neville decided.

"It can be," Dean said. "But the _really_ violent game is rugby."

A little further down the steps, Ron turned to Hermione. "Did you see him shrugging off that Bludger? That was really cool!"

Hermione sounded slightly shocked. "You mean the Bludger that _broke his_ _arm?_"

"Yeah, that one," Ron agreed.

Harry couldn't see, because there was a Percy in the way, but he had the feeling that the pause wasn't because Hermione had just accepted that answer.

"What?" Ron went on. "You're looking at me like I'm the crazy one here. Don't Muggles carry around boxes of acid and lightning in their pockets? _That's_ crazy."

"Pardon?" Hermione asked. "And – that Bludger broke his _arm_, Ron. That's not just a scrape or something."

"Don't see why," Ron said. "Oops – sorry… anyway, don't see why when the mediwizard can just fix it with a single spell. It's not like what happened to Oliver last game, _that_ was painful."

"It's still a broken arm!" Hermione insisted. "Why are you-"

Then she stopped and interrupted herself. "Do you mean batteries?"

"Yes!" Ron agreed. "Batteries! The things you stick in a Game Boy or a CD player to give them electricity."

"Is _that_ what they do?" Mr. Weasley asked, sounding fascinated. "How do they work?"

"I think it's something about how the acid dissolves something, but slowly," Ron said. "I'm not really sure how they know to only do it when you've put it in something, though."

"How well do you think that went, Harry?" Percy asked.

Harry refocused, thought about it, and nodded. "It was a lot of fun," he said. "And there was something amazing about being in a crowd with so many wizards."

"I do hope that Mr. Crouch is properly respected for the work he's done," Percy mused. "This is one of the largest gatherings of wizards there's ever been, and _I_ personally think it's gone rather well."

* * *

It took perhaps ten to twenty minutes just to get to the stadium gates again, and as they were leaving Harry looked back at the stadium and wondered what they were going to do with it.

Just making it vanish again seemed like a bit of a waste, but he supposed there wasn't much else they could do with it. In a Muggle country it would stick around as an extra sports stadium, but there was almost nothing that could even happen in Wizarding Britain that would need even a tenth as many seats and leaving it up would mean a big chunk of Dartmoor that was just off limits to nearly every single Muggle.

He thought about asking Percy, then actually did ask Percy, but apparently that was Department of Magical Games and Sports business more than his own.

"There's some cross-departmental work, of course," Percy added. "Quite a lot of Ministry wizards had to be seconded to the DMGS to help with construction. But I'm not privy to the plans."

"Maybe they'll get started while some of the visitors are still here," Sirius suggested. "On that front, anyone think we should stay around for the night? It's earlier than I expected, we _could_ pack up and Apparate home."

"What about how not all of us can Apparate?" Ron asked. "Aren't there too many of us to be Apparated?"

"I can fly home," Harry said. "I can take anyone with a small Animagus form who wants to come, as well."

"We may as well stay the night, though," Hermione mused. "We did go to the effort of setting up the tents."

"Why are we talking about going home?" Ginny asked. "Then we'd all be _home_ and there wouldn't be everyone to talk with."

"She makes a good point," Fred admitted.

There was a _whoosh_ somewhere off in the distance, and a cloud of green sparks rose into the air to form the shape of a shamrock. It was followed by a cloud of golden sparks that shaped into a harp, and Harry shook his head slightly.

"Do the Irish remember that we're supposed to be trying to hide?" he asked.

"Probably not," Percy said disapprovingly. "This is going to make things much harder for whoever hosts the _next_ World Cup, if this kind of behaviour happens at this one."

"It happens," Sirius told him. "I remember – well, after Moldy Voldy bit the dust there was all sorts going on."

"Oh, yes, I'd tried to forget," Arthur agreed. "Shooting stars in the daytime, owls everywhere… it was terribly hard to keep things under control."

That started another discussion, and Sirius quickly squeezed Harry's wing shoulder.

"Sorry about bringing it up," he said.

"It's okay," Harry replied. "It's – something I sort of got over before I even knew what had happened."

Then he thought of something, and looked up at Sirius. "And I'm proud of you, you know."

"You are?" Sirius replied, confused.

"That wasn't a good day for you, either," Harry said. "But you're getting over it as well."

Sirius nodded, looking like he wasn't sure whether or not to speak, and gave Harry a quick hug. It was a bit awkward, and Harry had to help, but he didn't care.

"So here's my question," Dean said. "How come the Irish team is that good but they don't play in the British Quidditch league?

"They do," Ron answered him. "They're split between two clubs though. Ballycastle and Kenmare have some _really _good players, we're lucky Kenmare has such terrible Beaters or they'd win every game with eight hundred more points than anyone else…"

* * *

AN:

* * *

Magical transportation for this Harry is a bit less varied than for the human sort.


	53. Death Isn't Edible

When Harry next woke up, something was wrong.

There were shouts coming through the fabric of the front door, high-pitched and frightened instead of the happy sounds of celebration, and he rolled upright and sent old books and letters slithering down the pile he'd been sleeping on.

Mr. Weasley stuck his head in. "Sirius – there's trouble!"

"What kind of trouble?" Neville asked, yawning halfway through as he stumbled into the kitchen from one of Harry's bedrooms. Dean was just behind him, and as Harry got into the kitchen too he noticed that Sirius was fumbling with his wand and a coat.

"Boys, you need to get outside – quickly!" Mr. Weasley told them in strained tones, squeezing aside a little so they could get past.

Neville went first, yawning again, then Dean followed, and Harry decided that Mr. Weasley wasn't exactly going to be sounding like this if it was just an unexpected late birthday party or something and that it would be a good idea to take it seriously. He stopped only long enough to make sure Hedwig's cage was open, so she could get out, then ducked through the doorway.

Outside it was still night-time, but the magical lanterns had gone and only a few campfires were still burning… and now he could hear better Harry could hear screams, people running away in panic, and what they were running away from was a crowd of wizards marching in step and casting the occasional spell.

There was sort of a sour taste in Harry's mouth as he stared at the scene. The wizards had masked faces, looking like they were all the same, and some of them were drunkenly cheering or shouting in that loud way that sounded like someone wanted to set up a chant but they were the only person who knew what they were actually trying to chant.

One of them blasted a tent out of the way, and the screams got louder. Then Harry saw the other thing the wizards were doing.

There were four people floating high in the air, like reverse puppets, and they didn't look like they were enjoying it. In fact, two of them were small children, and from the way the wizards laughed as they forced their victims to take funny poses it had to be something awful and cruel.

"That's just sick," Ron said softly.

Harry felt like that was a really _correct_ thing to say, but it didn't quite sum up how horrible this was.

How could people be so nasty about something like this? And there were more wizards joining the group, laughing and pointing as the woman was flipped upside down so her nightdress revealed her drawers.

"We're going to help the Ministry," Mr. Weasley shouted, as Hermione and Ginny got out of their tent and as the adult Weasleys appeared with their wands. "Get into the woods and stick together!"

"But we can help-" Neville began, and Sirius caught his shoulder sharply.

"Neville, I know how you feel," he said tightly. "I've felt that way as well. But the best thing for you is to get to safety."

"He's right," George agreed. "Come on, Nev."

Harry followed his friends through the darkness towards the nearby wood, catching the blurs of motion as first Neville and then Hermione dropped into their Animagus forms. It seemed to help them see better, and Harry was sure that nobody wanted to actually get in the way of a big toothy velociraptor.

The light wasn't very good, and Harry thought about providing some bluebell flames – then wondered if that would mean he'd get in trouble for doing magic outside of school.

That seemed like a silly thing to worry about, once he considered it a bit more, but then he realized that maybe just providing a lot of light would give the marchers somewhere else to come and look at and find people to be nasty at.

Thinking about that made Harry look back, and he saw that the crowd of marchers had got larger than ever. There were lots of Ministry wizards, now, but they were having trouble working out what to do and how they could save the Muggles from their plight without accidentally making them fall.

Suddenly, Harry realized something.

"I'm going back to help!" he said, turning and taking off with a flap of his wings.

"You what?" Ron demanded, before Harry was in the air and looking for Sirius.

* * *

"Harry – Harry!?" Sirius demanded in a strangled whisper, as Harry landed next to him. "What are you _doing_ here?"

There was a _whoosh_ of red light not far away, and Sirius glanced quickly back at the source before returning his attention to Harry – or most of it, at least, though Harry could quite understand why Sirius was still keeping some of his focus on the riot happening not far away.

"I just realized," Harry explained, the words sort of tumbling out of his mouth as he spread a wing to shield Sirius from any errant spells. "The Muggles – you can't do anything too big because they'll fall – but I can block the spells and then you can can catch them!"

"You-" Sirius started, then stopped and took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay, that – that sounds like it might work, but I don't – we'll need to get some more wizards to help, I can't catch four people myself."

Harry nodded, then winced as a tent got blasted out of the way.

Why couldn't they just walk around the tents or something? Or at least use a spell like the Levitation Charm to _move_ them out of the way?

Then again, maybe causing trouble was the point.

It didn't look like the marchers were about to march through the area where Harry's tent was, so hopefully his things were going to be okay.

"Let's get a bit further back," Sirius added, gesturing to Harry. "Bloody _hell_, I didn't think they were still-"

"_Incarcerous!"_ someone called, and a figure on the edge of the mob was bound up in magically conjured ropes. That led to drunken jeering, and then cheers as one of the Muggles was dropped six feet before the masked wizards raised them back up in the air again.

It looked like it had been a sort of warning, a look-what-we-could-do, and Harry felt like he wanted to set fire to the wizards who were doing it.

He wasn't _going_ to, but it was sort of tempting to go all Smaug.

* * *

For the next several minutes, Harry tried to work out more of the details of what was going on – what the Ministry wizards were doing about everything, as well as anything else it might be good to know – as Sirius tried to find other wizards who could come and help.

It didn't look like anyone was really in charge of the Ministry wizards, it was all people coming out and helping without any real plan going on, and that meant instead of going to whoever was in charge Sirius had to go and ask people one by one. Mr. Weasley was an obvious choice, but the other Weasleys were spread out and hard to find and Sirius just had to pick who he could get. That left them with Sirius himself, Mr. Weasley, a fellow by the name of Sturgis Podmore who Harry vaguely recognized from somewhere or other, and Mr. Diggory who Harry thought was called Amos.

When Harry explained his plan, Mr. Podmore gave him a serious look and then gave Sirius a look. "Do you think this is going to work?"

"Harry's scales bounce just about every spell we've tried," Sirius replied. "It's a lot safer than someone going over on a broom, and he's almost invisible when it's this dark."

Harry twitched a wing a bit, feeling slightly nervous, and Sirius crouched down on one knee.

"You can back out if you want, Harry," he said. "Nobody here would think less of you if you just got to safety."

The young dragon shook his head. "I'm going to do it," he insisted. "Do I need to wait?"

"You should go as soon as-" Sirius began, but Mr. Podmore held up a hand. "Hold on..."

He squinted into the darkness, then nodded. "I think that's Director Bones."

"As soon as you like, Harry," Sirius resumed, and Harry took off without another word.

* * *

From overhead it looked like the riot was actually quite small, compared to the campsite, which sort of made sense with how huge the campsite was to hold nearly a hundred thousand people. They were in tents that could hold a lot more people than Muggle tents, but then again the tents were often a lot bigger as well and they weren't all that close together.

Harry glanced over at the nearby wood where his friends were, not seeing anything, then banked around a little and beat his wings hard. Twice, three times, then he spread them out as wide as possible and dropped right over the marchers.

Someone shouted in surprise, and a red jet of light hit Harry's right wing with an ineffectual explosion of sparks. Then he was past, and he pulled up and flipped around to see what was going on.

The two Muggle adults and the girl were floating over to the side, much more gently now, but the boy was being pulled this way and that by a kind of magical tug-of-war and starting to cry.

He looked like he was about six, and Harry dove back down again to regain speed before pulling up directly underneath the young boy. That broke the spells, and the boy fell about a foot before Harry's forelimbs grabbed him around the waist.

Flying as hard as he could manage, Harry got hit by two more spells he didn't recognize before he was into the 'safe' area that wasn't over the rioters. He slowed down, spreading his wings to shed speed and juggling the boy from two limbs to four, and set him down as gently as possible on the grass.

"Are you a superhero?" the boy said. "How can you fly?"

Harry started to wonder how he was going to explain _that_, especially the whole 'dragon' thing that wouldn't be visible to a Muggle anyway, but then he noticed a series of brilliant flashes of light reflecting off the tents.

While he'd been focused entirely on getting the boy to safety, the Ministry wizards had started properly casting spells now they didn't have to worry about endangering the Muggles. There were so many going on it was a bit hard to tell, and now it was the people who'd been _around_ the marchers who were starting to run away, but none of them were Apparating away.

Maybe that was something the Aurors had done.

The marchers themselves were starting to cast spells as well, and then there was a brilliant green flash over in the wood and a gigantic magical shape ascended into the air.

It was like a skull made of emerald stars, with a snake for a tongue, and as it rose everything went completely silent. The fighting had suddenly stopped, everyone on both sides turning to stare, and Harry couldn't blame them.

Then a staccato wave of _cra-cr-crack _broke the silence, as dozens of wizards (and witches?) disapparated, most of them the ones wearing the robes and masks at first.

"What happened to the Anti-Disapparition jinx?" someone demanded, loudly enough that Harry could hear them.

There was a reply, which Harry _didn't_ hear, and the same voice spoke up again. "Someone put together a team and find whoever cast the Dark Mark!"

"Harry!" Sirius called. "Over here!"

A jet of red and gold sparks flashed into the air, and after looking for a moment Harry saw that Sirius was the one casting them. The rest of the Muggles were there as well, now safely on the ground, and Harry tapped the boy he'd rescued on the shoulder.

"Let's go and see your mum and dad," he suggested.

That got a nod, and then the boy looked at him more closely.

"Are you Hurry Man, then?" he asked. "Like Superman but being fast?"

"Harry's my name," Harry told him. "What's yours?"

"John," the boy said, as they started to walk. "Do you have a secret name like Superman?"

Everything was all very confusing, and Harry didn't have much more idea what was going on than John did, but it seemed like the best thing he could do to help at the moment was make sure John got to the rest of his family.

That way he could also ask Sirius what on earth had just happened.

* * *

As it happened, the Muggle family was the one who owned the fields they'd all been camping on. They'd made an awful lot of money over the last couple of weeks, by the sound of it, so Harry was happy for them in that at least – though they did seem terribly confused about where all the magic and things had suddenly come from.

Harry wondered if that was just the parents being unobservant or whether they'd been having their memories modified, which was a bit of a weird topic by itself to think about, but as the person in their little group with the most understanding of the Muggle world he was quickly involved in trying to reassure all four of them about what was going on.

That meant answering some questions from John's parents, and being introduced to his sister (called Susie, who was about a year younger than John was) and then just talking about things for a few minutes while everything calmed down. Harry was told about a book called The Three Little Wolves And The Big Bad Pig, which they'd clearly both enjoyed quite a lot, and it did give Harry a giggle when Susie said that the Big Bad Pig had to use dynamite to break down the house made of steel.

Clearly the wolves had a much better idea of how to keep people out than the pigs from the original story did, but then again the pig was much better at getting _into_ places than the wolf was. It all seemed to balance out nicely.

* * *

When everything was a bit more calmed down, and it seemed like he could, Harry thanked both of them for the book ideas and went over to Sirius.

"I should go and see how the others are," he suggested. "They might not know that the trouble's over now."

Sirius agreed to that readily, and glanced over his shoulder at the ex-riot. "I think Arthur and Charlie went off to the woods, so they might already have found them," he advised.

"What's going to happen to the people who got caught?" Harry asked, halting halfway through raising his wings for takeoff as an idea occurred to him.

"They're going to be in _big_ trouble, I think," Sirius guessed. "Some of Moldy's supporters got out of trouble by claiming they were acting under the Imperius curse, but nobody's going to believe that today."

"What if they really were?" Harry asked. "Didn't you get in trouble for something you didn't do?"

"That was Crouch's fault," Sirius replied darkly. "Fudge had_ better_ be more careful, but he's going to want to make an example. This was a great World Cup final until this happened."

He shook his head. "Sorry, I'm – go find your friends, Harry."

Harry gave Sirius a slightly worried look, then raised his wings the rest of the way and jumped into the air. His first downwards wingbeat came at the same moment, launching him higher, and then he powered up into the air in earnest.

* * *

Usefully, if in a slightly macabre way, the glowing green skull overhead which someone had called the Dark Mark lit up the wood well enough that Harry could see some of what was going on.

There were lots of confused wizards and witches wandering around the outside, some of them hesitantly raising wands to cast Wand-Lighting Charms and others consulting what looked like maps of the campsite before setting off to try and find their tents.

Then Harry spotted a cluster of shapes near a clearing, not far from directly underneath the Dark Mark, and looked more closely for a moment before realizing that one of them was a dinosaur. That meant it could only really be one group of people, and Harry slipped lower before landing again with a thump.

"...but it wasn't the House-Elf!" Dean was saying, looking at a group of Ministry wizards that seemed to include Percy's boss Mr. Crouch.

"He's right!" agreed Luna Lovegood, who much to Harry's surprise turned out to be there too. "It was someone in an invisibility cloak!"

"Aren't you Xenophilius' daughter?" someone asked. "This isn't another of those Quibbler stories, is it?"

"The Quibbler is a serious investigative paper," Luna said. "Besides, we caught him."

Mr. Crouch looked suddenly very worried, and Luna reached up to just in front of where Fred and George were standing.

She pulled at thin air, and a sudden ripple of silvery fabric flowed away to reveal the sandy-haired head of a wizard about the same age as Sirius.

"What is this nonsense?" Mr. Crouch demanded. "One of _you_ must have cast the Mark, and you've put this boy-"

"Barty!" Mr. Weasley interrupted. "Isn't that your _son?_ I thought he was dead!"

"And he would have gotten away with it, too," Luna said serenely. "If it wasn't for us meddling kids and our Animaguses."

Harry wasn't _entirely_ sure why Dean and Hermione promptly fell over laughing. It was educational, though, because he'd never seen a dromaeosaur laugh before.

* * *

Even later, after everyone had tried to explain what had happened and Barty Crouch (both of them) had been taken away by the Aurors, Harry still found it a little hard to get his head around what had happened.

Based on everything that everyone said, it seemed as though the younger Barty had been under an invisibility cloak up in the Top Box. He'd stolen a wand – Harry thought he recognized it as Draco's one, but he might have been wrong – and then cast the Dark Mark later on during the riot.

Harry wasn't entirely clear on whether he'd cast it because he wanted to help the rioters get away, like Director Bones seemed to think, or whether it was for some other reason, but either way he'd had the bad luck to do it practically on top of all of Harry's friends and had been unable to get away from being flattened by Lapcat and Clever Girl and put in armlocks by both the Weasley Twins.

Then there'd been some terribly confusing moments when the Ministry people had shown up, and Mr. Crouch's House-Elf Winky had briefly been accused of being the one to cast the Dark Mark because the wand had landed next to her.

It sounded like Mr. Crouch was in an absolutely _tremendous_ amount of trouble, because he'd helped his son escape from Azkaban, and Sirius seemed quite cheerful about the whole thing.

Harry did worry a bit about what Percy was going to do now, but presumably he'd just stay in much the same job for whoever replaced Mr. Crouch.

If this sort of thing was going to happen every World Cup, though, Harry would gladly stay home for future ones.

* * *

Getting the news over the next few days proved to be really quite interesting.

There was a special issue of the Quibbler that just reprinted all their reporting on Mr. Crouch with a big banner headline saying TOLD YOU SO, which wasn't exactly professional but it was very funny indeed. The Daily Prophet went into a bit more of the details, and continued to do so as the various details slowly unfolded.

Harry found out that the name used for Tom Riddle's followers was 'Death Eaters', which was one of those names where he wasn't sure if it was very clever or very silly. It had death in it, and sounded intimidating, but if you actually thought about it then it didn't make much sense for what they were.

If they _ate_ death, wouldn't that mean they'd be reducing the total amount of death in an area? And death didn't sound like the sort of thing you'd want to eat, either, because if anything was going to be dangerous to your health when you ate it it would be death.

Harry sort of pondered that for quite a while, but eventually decided it wasn't especially relevant to the actual news – which was that there'd been two Death Eaters captured during the riot, before the rest had got away thanks to Barty Crouch Jr. breaking the Anti-Disapparition Jinx with the use of the Dark Mark.

(According to the paper _that_ had been a mistake by the Ministry, because that wasn't actually supposed to happen, and 'steps' were being taken to rectify the problem.)

The two Death Eaters who'd actually been captured were a whole scandal by themselves, because one of them was called MacNair and he was the one who executed magical beasts that needed executing. There were 'concerns at the highest level' about whether his previous cases should be reopened, and Minister Fudge was quoted as 'assuring' the paper that 'the legal process would be followed in this matter and in all the others raised'.

Harry thought that was only sensible. Sirius was a good example of what happened when the legal process wasn't followed.

The other one who'd been caught was called Avery, and like MacNair he was one of the ones who'd said that the Imperius Curse had been used on him to make him commit crimes back in the past. That wasn't going to work this time, by the sounds of it, and the trial was scheduled for just before the start of the Hogwarts term.

The various other drunk people who'd been marching alongside the Death Eaters were being investigated as well and were probably going to get into _some_ sort of trouble, but it wasn't nearly as clear.

Then there was the two Barty Crouches, which was just plain confusing and made Harry start to wonder about how plurals worked with more than one Barty Crouch. They were both going to Azkaban as well, in the younger Crouch's case because he was technically supposed to still be there in the first place and in the older Crouch's case because of helping the younger one get out of Azkaban. (There still needed to be a trial about that one, but nobody really thought he was going to be getting out of it.)

It was really kind of a strange feeling, having all this going on. It was like reading the bit in _The Sapphire Rose_ where all the politics stuff happened in the Elene holy city, only it was happening to actual people Harry had seen and met and indeed involving events he'd seen and participated in.

* * *

"Do you mind talking about what happened during the war?" Harry asked, one evening.

Sirius looked up from the book he was reading. "That's a very good question."

Harry got up from his chair, pushing himself up with his wings until he overbalanced and dropped onto the floor, and absorbed the impact by thumping down onto both forelegs.

Walking around a bit, he looked at the book Sirius was reading.

"I think he's there," he said, tapping a claw.

"Wow, thanks," Sirius groaned. "I was enjoying the challenge."

He poked the book with the back end of his wand. "Do you think it'd be better if they were moving around?"

"Probably not," Harry judged. "Unless they just did the same few things over and over again."

"Might have to try that," Sirius said, putting away _Where's Wally._ "Anyway… what sort of thing did you want to know?"

"Mostly what it felt like," Harry said. "Whether it was like what happened at the World Cup. That sort of thing."

"Well… in a way, it was," Sirius replied. "The whole thing that Moldy Voldie was doing was about scaring people. We never knew how many actual supporters he had, because it was hard to tell."

He hissed through his teeth. "That's what Barty Crouch was sort of doing too, in a way," he added. "Now I think about it. He was using the same sort of fear as Voldie, just not in the same way – he wanted to be Minister for Magic, but of course that didn't work out."

"Do you think that's why he sent you straight to Azkaban?" Harry asked.

"Probably," Sirius agreed. "Anyway, this is getting too depressing. Let's talk about something else."

He snapped his fingers. "I know – what about romance?"

"...pardon?" Harry asked, not at all sure what had suddenly happened to the conversation.

"You're a teenager," Sirius said. "Aren't you supposed to be thinking about that sort of thing all the time? Any school work you do is just sort of a distraction from thinking about romance?"

"Not really, no," Harry replied. "I suppose I like thinking about the characters in the books I read having things work out for them, like Carrot and Angua, but it's just when I'm reading the books really."

"...someone in one of your books is called carrot?" Sirius asked, surprised. "Huh. Anyway… you're sure you're not thinking about it the whole time?"

He paused. "You have had The Talk, haven't you?"

"We got it in Year Six in primary school," Harry answered. "I'm not really sure how much it applied to me, though, and they didn't have a special one for dragons. I thought that was just because I was the only dragon at Little Whinging JMI."

Sirius reached up to stroke his stubbly beard. "Maybe it's just me who spent my entire teenage years thinking about that sort of thing, then..."

Harry thought about it and decided that that was exactly the sort of thing Sirius would probably do.

* * *

The way Harry expected to wake up on the morning of the Twenty-First of August was much the same way he'd woken up the last few mornings. With a yawn, and a stretch, then lazily pick up his current book – _The Bellmaker_, the latest Redwall book, in this case – and go down into the Dogwarts kitchen and argue good-naturedly with Kreacher over what there was for breakfast.

After that, it would be eating breakfast and continuing to read about the Southlands until Sirius arrived for his own breakfast, whereupon they'd decide what to do for the rest of the day.

He got as far as picking up _The Bellmaker_ when Sirius knocked on the door.

"Come in?" Harry said, curious, and Sirius promptly did so.

"Remus is in the hospital," he said, sounding dreadfully worried.

Harry frowned at that, then remembered that it had been a full moon last night – or technically it was probably the full full moon right now, but it had been the night closest to when the moon was full which was what seemed to count.

"What happened?" he asked, putting the book back down on his hoard and picking up his wand instead.

"I don't know, I just got told he was there," Sirius replied. "Andy Flooed me only a few minutes ago."

"Can we go and see him?" Harry asked.

"That's why I came to get you," Sirius confirmed, and stood aside to let Harry out before following him downstairs.

* * *

"Do you think it was the jinx on the Defence Against the Dark Arts position?" Harry asked, then threw some Floo powder into the fireplace. "Um… the hospital?"

The fire blew up in a plume of green, but it only lasted a moment before dying down.

"It's St. Mungos," Sirius told him. "And I don't know, but maybe. I didn't – I should have reminded Remus."

"St. Mungos," Harry repeated with his second pawful of Floo powder, and this time it worked. He stepped straight through, holding his wings ready, and caught a glimpse of fireplaces swirling past in all directions before exiting through a big stone fireplace in a slightly beige room. He flared his wings to slow his momentum, but in a way he needn't have bothered – the floor was covered with thick mats sporting a cheerful flower vine pattern, and they squished slightly under the pressure of Harry's feet.

It was the first time Harry had seen a landing room for a fireplace that looked like someone could _fall_ through a fireplace and land safely, and he supposed that made sense for a hospital.

Sirius came through as well, and pointed to a door. "Over there, that's the reception."

Harry followed Sirius' directions, and as they went into the reception room a pleasant-looking wizard smiled at them over the desk.

"Visitors or intake?" he asked.

"Visitors," Sirius said, for both of them. "We're here to see Remus Lupin."

"Well, he's certainly popular!" the wizard said smilingly. "He's on the first floor, the Dai Llewellyn ward. I think he's the only one in there at the moment so he should be easy to find. I'll just make you your passes..."

While that was going on, Harry took a quick look around.

It sort of reminded him of Muggle hospitals he'd seen on television, though where most Muggle hospitals were sort of beige and white and green it looked like they'd started with the beige and white and then decided that the place could do with a bit of colour and put flower patterns on everything.

"There you go," the receptionist said, and Harry pulled himself up to counter level to take his. "The stairs are just over there."

"I wonder who else was visiting," Harry mused.

"Could be Dora and Ted," Sirius suggested. "Andy works here but they'd count as visitors."

Harry supposed that was possible, but he wasn't certain.

* * *

One of the things that caught Harry's eye was, oddly enough, that all the doorknobs and door handles were made of silver. It seemed to be real silver, as well, rather than just something that looked like silver, because there was a little bit of tarnish on one of them.

Harry wondered if there was a reason for that as they climbed up to the first floor, but when they entered the corridor leading to the Dai Llewellyn ward they could hear raised voices.

"That doesn't sound good," Sirius said, hurrying up a bit, and promptly got scolded by a mediwitch for running in the corridors.

From what Harry could hear, it sounded like there was an argument with Remus on one side and two or three voices on the other side – none of which sounded like Ted _or_ Dora. They were saying something about packs, and then Harry and Sirius rounded the corner and saw what was going on.

Remus was lying in a hospital bed with beige sheets, and he had some quite extravagant wound dressings on his left side and a cast on his right arm. He really looked like he'd been in the wars, with several smaller injuries – mostly scratches – and a bandage around his forehead.

"Merlin, Moony, what _happened?"_ Sirius asked, stopping in the doorway.

"You should see the other guy," Remus replied, then winced. "Well, you can't, but..."

"Exactly!" said a scruffy-looking witch, who sounded like one of the ones who'd been arguing before.

Refocusing on the whole room instead of just Remus, Harry realized there were nearly a dozen other witches and wizards there. A couple of them looked older than Sirius and Remus were, but most of them were quite young – one looked only a year or so out of Hogwarts, but Harry didn't recognize him.

"Who did that?" Sirius asked. "Why haven't they healed you yet?"

He clenched his fist. "If it's because you're a werewolf-"

"No, they can't," Remus interrupted. "And – it sort of is?"

He took a deep breath, then let it out again. "It was Fenrir."

"Fenrir Greyback?" Sirius repeated. _"The_ Fenrir Greyback?"

"Unless you know another one," Remus replied. "He confronted me just before the full moon rose, said I deserved what I was getting for being a tame dog."

"But he's dead now," the young wizard piped up. "And that means Remus is our new alpha!"

"That's not how alphas work," Harry said.

Everyone else – all the people who Harry realized suddenly were _all_ werewolves – turned to look at Harry in surprise.

"In zoos you get an alpha who's in charge because they scare the other wolves," Harry tried to explain. "But in the wild, a pack is just a family, and the alphas are the mother and father of the cubs."

"Are you _sure_?" a sallow-cheeked witch asked, and Harry shrugged his wings.

"It's what my friend June says, and she's a wolf so she'd know."

"Oh, _I_ see," said a big wizard who seemed to be the oldest person in the room. "So that means Remus is our new _father_. That makes more sense."

Harry wasn't really sure he followed that.

* * *

The Tonkses visited a bit later, shortly after a long argument had reluctantly cooled down, and Andromeda Tonks told Harry and Sirius (and the quietly listening werewolves) that Remus was probably going to take a couple of months to heal but that they were fairly sure he _would_ heal eventually.

It was just that he'd have to heal at the normal slow Muggle speed. Ordinarily they'd be worried about someone getting a bit more werewolf-ish even if they'd been attacked by a werewolf who was in human form, and Fenrir had been in wolf form, but since Remus was already a werewolf it wasn't really possible for him to get more werewolf.

Werewolf was starting to lose meaning as a word, as far as Harry was concerned.

It also turned out that none of the wolves in what Fenrir Greyback had called his pack had actually had a proper education. There were five of them who were witches or wizards, none of whom had gone to Hogwarts because their parents hadn't wanted to risk it, and two Muggles who'd actually been orphaned by Fenrir's attacks and who he'd then effectively kidnapped.

That led Harry to ask how Remus had killed Fenrir, and Remus had explained that they'd fought almost entirely as werewolves. But Fenrir had been animalistic and enraged, just like most werewolves, while Remus had been on a dose of Wolfsbane and as such had been able to actually plan and think.

He'd also snagged his wand and cast a silent Reductor curse, which Fenrir hadn't been expecting.

"And good riddance!" Dora Tonks said firmly. "He's been a bastard for decades."

The sallow-cheeked witch bristled slightly, but the big wizard held out a hand and she quietened down.

Then there was a knock at the door, and Dumbledore peeked around the threshold.

"Good morning, everyone," he said cheerfully. "I do hope I'm not interrupting anything?"

Harry looked at Remus, and so did everyone else.

"Come in, Professor," he said.

Dumbledore duly entered, observed the seating situation in the room – which was that all the unused beds had people sitting on them – and conjured a chair with a single swift wand movement, before sitting down.

"I do hope you are on the mend, Remus," he said. "I would have sent a gift basket, but I decided I should bring it myself."

Putting action to words, he reached into one of the pockets of his robes and drew out a large wicker basket full of fruit and chocolates.

"I had to guess what you would like," he explained. "So if there is something that is not to your liking, please do re-gift it; I won't mind."

He turned a still-cheerful gaze on the werewolves. "And who are your friends?"

"We're the Lupin pack," the youngest of the werewolves said quickly, before anyone else could answer.

Remus muttered something, then shifted in bed slightly to get a little more comfortable.

"Charmed, I'm sure," Dumbledore proclaimed himself. "Though not Transfigured, and I should hope no more than slightly Potioned. In any case, Mr. Lupin, I fear I must ask how long you expect to be indisposed."

"He should be right as rain by the end of the year," Andromeda Tonks told him. "But I expect he won't be out of the bed for a few weeks at least, cursed injuries aren't to be trifled with."

"Alas," Dumbledore said, saddened. "It seems I shall have to interview someone new for the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. We do seem to go through them."

"I think that's a real shame," Harry added, voicing his opinion. "You've been the best Defence teacher we've ever had, except perhaps for the one who was using a fake name."

"Watch it," Dora warned, waving her finger.

"I would remind you not to meddle in the affairs of dragons, miss Tonks," Dumbledore pointed out. "Even the pleasant dragons like Mr. Potter should not be trifled with, as I myself learned just earlier this month."

"Dragon?" asked one of the Muggle werewolves. "What does he mean, dragon?"

"Ah, interesting," Dumbledore added. "I am sure that Harry or Remus will be able to explain everything to you in due time."

He turned his attention to Harry. "And before it slips my mind, Mr. Potter, I wished to inform you that the language project will be going ahead quite as originally planned."

"I'm afraid I don't know what that project is, Professor," Harry admitted.

"Well, then, far be it from me to spoil the surprise," Dumbledore decided.

* * *

Harry turned that problem over and over in his mind for the rest of the summer holidays, but wasn't quite able to work out what Dumbledore had meant.

Perhaps it was how distracted he was anyway. Remus being unwell meant that almost every day of the holidays saw a visit to him, and then there was a flurry of getting-ready for the next School Year that had to be done – no need for new robes, but there were new Defence books to be got when the amended supply note went out, and Harry would never miss a chance to stock up on new books of all kinds.

Then there was getting ready for the Spelljammer bit of the dungeons and dragons game, and keeping up with the news as the Death Eaters were imprisoned (in Azkaban, of course) and the drunken marchers ended up with quite stiff fines.

It all added up, and in an odd sort of way Harry was quite relieved when September the First came around and it was time to go and catch the train.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Does Luna know what she's referencing?

Good question…

As for the Remus thing, well, the DADA curse in this case just decided to knock off an A and curse him to be DAD.


	54. Fourth Right Dragon

It was with something of a shock that Harry realized, on reaching Platform Nine And Three Quarters, that not only was Percy no longer at Hogwarts but Harry himself was halfway between starting Hogwarts and starting seventh year.

It felt like the time had flown by (not unlike a dragon, perhaps) and so once he was in the platform itself Harry decided to just stop by the entrance and watch for a few minutes.

Watching all the witches and wizards – young and old – made him feel quite happy. It was slightly marred by the memory that some of them were the sort of people to laugh at Muggles being floated around, but then again none of them wanted to _admit_ it so that meant most people were fundamentally pretty decent.

And there was how Harry himself had ended up being treated. Everyone could see he was a dragon, and most people just didn't care that much.

"Wow!" someone said, right by Harry's wing, and he jumped.

"See?" Colin asked. "I told you I went to school with a dragon!"

"Morning, Colin," Harry said, then looked at the slightly smaller Colin next to him. "Is this your brother Dennis? You told me about him once."

"That's right!" Colin agreed. "Dennis is a wizard too!"

"It's nice to meet you, then," Harry said.

"Do your wings work?" Dennis said. "Can you fly with them?"

Harry nodded, but then explained that it wouldn't be very polite to demonstrate because he might inconvenience people. Then he said hello to Mr. and Mrs. Creevey, as well, though he had to do the usual thing where he explained that, yes, he was actually a dragon.

As a bit of an experiment, Harry tried using a bluebell flames spell with his fire breath instead of using his wand. That meant he exhaled a small amount of the harmless blue fire, and while he probably still looked like a fire breathing _human_ instead of a fire breathing _dragon_ it was at least a fun way to show off.

Dennis' eyes were huge by the end of the conversation, and Harry would have said they were like saucers except that saucers were actually really big and Harry hadn't ever seen anyone except Nora with eyes _that_ big.

* * *

When he actually got around to getting on the train, Harry didn't have to go far before he found the right compartment. None of the Weasleys had arrived yet, but Hermione and Dean were there, and Neville arrived just a minute or so after Harry did.

Harry duly took his position up on the luggage rack, to free up some space, and opened up the backpack full of books he'd brought with him.

"Is anyone interested in something?" he asked.

"I'd quite like one of the Discworld ones," Hermione asked. "What about you, Dean?"

"Not sure," Dean admitted.

Harry rummaged around for the one Hermione was after, and handed her down _Reaper Man _as the first Terry Pratchett book he could find. The second one was _Only You Can Save Mankind_, and Dean was interested enough to give that a go.

Since he didn't want to leave Neville as the only one without a book, Harry dug a bit deeper before finding the first of the Elenium books. He offered it to his friend, but Neville declined – instead deciding to play some solo chess, at least at first – so Harry just decided he may as well re-read it himself.

That left them in a quiet, contented silence for the next few minutes, pierced only by the thumps and crashes of Neville's travel chess set beating itself up, until the compartment door slid open and four Weasleys came in.

Fred, George, and their friend Lee Jordan all worked together to expand the compartment, and then Ron reminded everyone of the idea he'd had on the train the previous year. Harry had to admit he'd forgotten it, but once he'd mentioned it everyone quickly went along with it.

* * *

One of the funny things about reading a book series again, Harry knew, was that when you came to bits early on with knowledge about what happened later you could get sort of funny results.

Like the bit where the reader was first introduced to Sephrenia in _The Diamond Throne_, where there were all sorts of things the narrator said about her which were either completely wrong or merely very funny if you'd read _Domes of Fire_.

Harry was just smirking at the bit where Sephrenia claimed to be illiterate when there was a knock on the door.

It slid open a moment later, and a couple of young boys who Harry didn't recognize looked in.

"Hi, is there… space… in… here?" one of them asked, his voice trailing off as he stared at the inside of the compartment.

Harry had to admit that he could sort of understand their confusion.

In the first place, this compartment was twice as big as it should have been, but beyond that there was the _contents_ of the compartment. Ginny, Luna and Lee Jordan were normal enough, using an expansive enough definition of normal to admit Luna Lovegood, but then there was a squirrel reading a science book and a panther playing chess.

Next to the panther was a little crow turning the pages on _Only You Can Save Mankind_, and then a mink and a pine marten making drawings on a piece of parchment. Then there was a sphinx, paws crossed to support her head and a big book of number puzzles open in front of her.

The final touch would have been the warg consulting some sheet music, or perhaps the honest-to-goodness _dinosaur_ halfway through _Reaper Man_, but then Harry waved and the reaction of the new students made Harry realize that actually the final touch was _him_.

"Oh, okay, um… we'll try somewhere else?" the other said, and slid the compartment door closed again.

The pine marten turned back into a Twin, and sniggered.

"Brilliant idea, Ronnie-nutkins," he said. "That's five so far!"

* * *

Some more familiar faces showed up as the Hogwarts Express filled up, a few of them to join (Tiobald parked his wheelchair in the corner and started talking to Luna) and others to just say hello, like Blaise or Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.

In the case of the Barlos girls, they explained apologetically that there were half a dozen Second Year girls all in the same compartment and they were going down there, but they'd hardly finished before everyone assured them that it was fine and nobody there was going to think less of them.

Eleven o'clock rolled around soon enough, though, and the Hogwarts Express picked up speed and rolled out of Platform Nine And Three Quarters. Harry craned his neck a little to watch through the window, enjoying the sight, then decided to raise a question.

"Is there a reason why we should wait to get changed?" he asked. "Or could we just do it early on?"

Ron blurred back into his more customary form, and frowned. "Might want to wait until the lady with the snacks comes around, mate," he suggested. "Otherwise there'd be lots of us waiting in the hallway and we might get in her way."

He scratched his head. "Couldn't you have come in robes anyway?"

"No, Muggles see if I'm wearing them," Harry explained. "It's one of the weird things."

"Some of us decided to come in robes anyway," Tanisis said, indicating her own. "I couldn't go on the concourse anyway."

"Have you tested that?" Lee asked. "Harry can."

"Actually, yes, she did," Ginny supplied. "It was one of the times Mum's second cousin came around, when the Sanuras were visiting Luna – bit awkward, but we managed to get the timing sorted out. He could see they were sphinxes."

"Makes sense," Lee admitted. "Unless Squibs see things differently to Muggles."

"I don't think I've ever been able to ask any," Harry replied.

"What about Filch, the caretaker?" Ron suggested. "Everyone says he's a Squib."

Harry thought about that, and was about to explain how he felt it would be awfully impolite to go up to Mr. Filch and ask if he was a Squib when there was a knock at the door.

"Huh," Ron said, and reverted back to Nutkin.

"Come in," Harry invited, after a moment when he realized nobody else was sure whose job it was to say so.

The door slid aside, and a rather nervous-looking centaur peered inside – then took a step backwards in surprise.

"Ah..." he began. "Someone further up the train said I should try this compartment?"

"That sounds like they had very good taste," Luna said with a smile. "Are you a first year?"

"I… am, yes," the centaur agreed – Harry wasn't sure if the right word was boy, or colt, or something in between that was a special-issue term for centaurs only. "Are all of you Hogwarts students as well?"

He seemed especially perturbed by Hermione.

Tiobald said something, fingers flicking, and Luna translated. "Yes, we're all Hogwarts students. Some of us are as surprised as you are."

Hermione shifted back to human, which made the centaur relax a bit, and he walked slowly in before shutting the door behind him.

"I knew about June," he said. "And – sorry, I don't know many of the names."

"Tanisis," Tanisis offered, rising to all fours before padding over and offering a paw.

The centaur boy (Harry had decided to use boy for now) shook it, then stepped back with one hoof and bowed slightly. "Thank you for your help in saving my father."

"Oh, you were at that fight that happened at the forest, weren't you?" Harry realized. "Sorry, I didn't recognize you."

"Yes – I was," the centaur agreed. "And thank you as well..."

June's tongue lolled out for a moment. "I think we'll just all consider ourselves thanked, Conal."

Conal's reaction to that was a faint sigh of relief.

* * *

From the way Conal described it, it seemed that the events of the battle at the forest's edge had been quite extensive.

Some centaurs didn't like wizards or want anything to do with them – the name Conal mentioned was Bane – while others, like Firenze (who Harry remembered well) had always liked the idea of trying to be friendly with humans.

Most of them had sort of been in the middle, not quite sure what to think, and apparently they'd been paying a lot of attention to how Tiobald had been getting on. That prompted a wave from the Selkie boy, who said that he'd done quite well in most of his exams but had had a bit of trouble with his flying lessons, and then Conal said that the thing which had really made up minds was how his father – Ronan – had been saved and then healed by wizards and witches during and after the battle.

It seemed that Bane still didn't want anything to do with wizards, but Conal had decided to take a risk and his uncle Firenze had been very encouraging.

"I think I'm the first centaur to have a wand," he added. "Or the first in a very long time."

"Did you go to the same place I did for robes?" Tanisis asked. "Madam Malkin?"

"Yes – yes, I did," Conal agreed. "She said robes for absolutely all occasions, and she was right."

Lapcat gave a feline snigger, then shifted back to Neville to speak.

"I was there when Harry went for his first set of robes," he explained. "Madam Malkin was really surprised, then. I bet she isn't any more, though."

"Yeah, probably not," Lee Jordan agreed. "Not after doing a three headed dog last year. Snazzy robes, though."

"Any idea what House you'll be in?" Ginny said. "We don't have anyone here from Slytherin, but we know a few of them so we could tell you what it's like."

She frowned down at her twin elder brothers, still in the form of mustelids. "Though I do sometimes think Fred and George _should_ have gone to Slytherin."

Trouble reverted from Pine Marten to Weasley, and gasped. "For shame, Ginevra! Why do you insult us so?"

"I'm not insulting you," Ginny replied placidly. "I'm just saying I think you're _so good_ at being sneaky that you fooled the Sorting Hat."

"Can you actually do that?" Lee said. "Fool the Sorting Hat, I mean."

"If anyone's interested in trying it, it'd be the Slytherins," Neville said. "But, hold on, doesn't that mean _anyone_ could be a really sneaky Slytherin?"

They all looked suspiciously at one another, at least until the giggles started.

* * *

The train ride was just as long as ever, the Hogwarts Express speeding north through England on a railway route that probably went straight through Muggle stations at full speed without being noticed, and Harry and his friends all settled down to let time pass around them.

Conal was still a little nervous, at first, and after being assured that nobody here had any problem with him he went over and sat down next to June.

Harry sort of overheard her talking to him about the Unusually Shaped Society and how helpful it was, which gave him a nice warm feeling about being able to help people (and not the same kind of nice warm feeling when he was about to breathe fire).

Meanwhile, now that it wasn't likely that anyone else would be coming along to look into their compartment, Animagi started reverting back to forms where they could do things like talk. Harry felt a bit guilty about how funny it was when Ron changed back and Conal jumped, because it seemed that the young centaur had completely failed to notice Nutkin, but then Conal shook his head and laughed softly before raising a hand in surrender.

So that was probably all right.

* * *

"It's been kind of weird, actually," Ron was saying, most of an hour later. "You remember that thing a couple of years ago with – well, with Peter Pettigrew?"

Nods, except for Conal who looked a little confused. Harry heard June say something about explaining it to him later, and he nodded.

"It's kind of like that, except that I didn't have to go and talk to the courts," Ron resumed. "Percy's being kept late at work all the time, I think it's because they're trying to work out if they actually know everything to keep the department running without him and he was Mr. Crouch's assistant."

"So there'd be a lot of things he'd be the only one to know," Harry realized out loud.

"Right," Ron agreed.

"He seems kind of happy about it, though," Ginny added. "Maybe it's because all the paperwork is like revising for exams."

That drew a few sniggers, but then there was a rattle outside the door.

"I'll get it," Harry volunteered, putting a bookmark in _The Diamond Throne_, and jumped down from the luggage rack to the floor of the compartment.

Working out exactly how much to get took a few minutes, and eventually Harry just decided there wasn't any problem with getting too much of anything and got enough that everyone should have at least something to enjoy.

Then Ron started biting tiny little bits off reasonable-looking Every Flavour Beans, putting the ones he liked the taste of in a little pile, and told everyone about how Charlie was staying over for some reason that none of them were really sure of. He worked in Romania, after all, but it seemed as though there was something that meant he could stay in England without any trouble?

It all sounded very strange, and it sort of made Harry wonder about the thing that Sirius hadn't been told about because it might have meant he'd give it away. He volunteered that information, and apparently Mr. Weasley _did_ know because all four Weasleys in the compartment promptly groaned.

Then, his piece said, Ron turned into Nutkin and started going through his selected Every Flavour Beans now they were much bigger than before.

* * *

It was still a little bit awkward for everyone to get changed. Harry ended up feeling silly, because he hadn't bothered to bring his tent – it was with the rest of his things being delivered to the castle by Kreacher, who was glad to help – and if he had then they could have just gone in there and used the separate rooms.

Instead it took a few relays to do it properly, even with how at least there was enough room for people like Harry to fully stretch out as they got changed, and he and Neville ended up helping Conal get his slightly fiddly robes sorted out.

By the time they were done it was getting dark, and Harry looked out the window to see the moon before remembering that because the full moon had been about a week and a half ago that meant the moon set _before_ the sun did.

After three years of Astronomy Harry sort of felt he should have known that by now.

Then the train was coming to a stop, and Harry heard June assuring Conal that they were all going to be going to the same place and that the First Years got a special treat by going a different _way_ to the castle.

It was nice of her to be thoughtful like that.

* * *

On the way up to the castle, Ron somehow found something to talk about that he hadn't even mentioned over the previous several hours, which Harry found kind of impressive.

"What I was thinking about," he began, "was brooms."

"Somehow I'm not surprised," Dean joked.

"Yeah, yeah," Ron replied, chuckling. "But – well, it wasn't just the World Cup, but that was part of it. I was wondering how high brooms can actually go, and if there's a limit."

Pacing alongside the Thestral carriage, Harry saw Ron wave his hand. "So I tried to find out, but Charlie doesn't know and the best Percy could do was point out that people need an air supply to go high. So maybe brooms can just keep going forever?"

"I'm not sure I'd trust a broom to keep going forever," Neville contributed. "Any ideas, Hermione? Ginny?"

"Maybe brooms need air to push off?" Harry suggested. "I know I can only fly so high before it gets so the air's too thin and my wings don't work well."

"But if that was… hold on," Hermione frowned. "Do we actually know if brooms are faster when they're higher up?"

"I've read lots of broom magazines," Ginny told her. "I've only ever seen broom top speeds mentioned, not top speeds at different heights."

"Then we should do an experiment," Hermione said. "To see if brooms go faster, slower, or the same speed when they're higher up."

"You've lost me," Ron admitted.

"Well, the air's thinner higher up," Hermione began. "Like Harry said. And I _think_ aeroplanes could go faster if they were higher up except that they need to push against air – with propellors or jets or things like that," she elaborated. "So there's less air to get in the way, but less air to push with. And there are rocket planes which don't have that problem."

"Right, like the Space Shuttle," Ron picked up. "It's kind of awkward because the faster they go low down the more they have to push air out of the way, but they also want to get higher up as quickly as possible because they have to _lift_ all the fuel they're going to use higher up."

"So," Hermione resumed. "If a broom doesn't depend on air, it _should_ go faster higher up. Unless it just always goes at the same speed…"

"You can speed up in a dive," Dean pointed out. "Does that mean anything?"

"...I think I need some parchment," Hermione decided.

* * *

The discussion took them all the way up to the castle, and to their places in the Great Hall as well – and drew in a few of the people they sat near, as well.

It seemed like nobody had any actual idea what the limits of brooms were, or if anyone did it was in something Harry hadn't read yet. That gave him a bit of a snigger at the idea of the information they were after being hidden in Witch Weekly instead of Which Broomstick, but before long the ghosts came swooping through the wall and the doors opened to admit the First Years.

As this was his fourth Sorting, Harry decided to see if he could work out how unusual people thought Conal was. He was certainly the first centaur to come to Hogwarts, unless you defined 'come to Hogwarts' quite broadly Harry supposed, but he wasn't the first Beast to come to Hogwarts and in fact no matter what House he ended up in he wouldn't be the first non-human there.

Then Harry looked again at the rest of the First Years as the Sorting Hat kept singing, to see if he could see any _other_ non human students. There didn't seem to be anyone else who wasn't human, though with kitsune or veela it could apparently be quite hard to tell and Harry had never seen or heard of a young hag.

The very idea seemed a bit strange.

Suddenly he wanted to get out his copy of _Fantastic Beasts_ to see if he could work out which other types of non-human would be able to actually _understand_ a Hogwarts education. He was fairly sure there was something in there about griffins having jobs or something? But it would be rude to interrupt the Sorting like that, and indeed someone called Stewart Ackerley was already being Sorted into Ravenclaw.

Then someone went to Slytherin (and sat down in an empty space next to the Smiths, which was probably bad news for Fred and George). They were followed by a girl who went to Hufflepuff, and then a boy (who also went to Hufflepuff) and Professor McGonagall read out her next name.

"Conal," she said.

The young centaur began to step forwards, but then there was a wave of whispering throughout the hall.

"What's his first name?" someone called.

"That is his first name, Mr. Matthews," Professor McGonagall said sharply.

That didn't actually get everyone to stop talking, though they did get a lot quieter, and Conal headed over to pick up the Sorting Hat and put it on his head.

After about twenty seconds or so, the hat decided he should go to Hufflepuff. Well, actually the hat decided he should go to HUFFLEPUFF, but that was just how the Sorting Hat was.

Straight after that, Dennis Creevey became the first new Gryffindor. He clearly wanted to sit next to Harry, but there were already quite a lot of people doing that and so instead he sat next to his brother (who wasn't far from Harry anyway, so Harry took the time to say hello again).

* * *

After everyone was Sorted, and Professor Dumbledore said a few words (this time they were 'Get', 'On', 'With' and 'It'), the Sorting Feast began. It was always a treat to eat a Hogwarts feast, and Harry was happy to get stuck in – Kreacher was a perfectly fine cook, but the inventiveness of over a hundred House-Elves in Hogwarts was hard to equal.

Just from what he could see at the moment there was a roast pizza with all the trimmings – and Harry had never seen a pizza with toppings of chicken, roast potato, carrot, sprout and stuffing – not far from a dish of mashed potato and sausages mixed with parsnips made to _look_ like sausages, and next to both of those was what appeared to be a whole meat pie half submerged in mushy peas.

Harry wasn't entirely sure you were supposed to leave the meat dish, but he solved that by taking the dish off and eating through that over the next few minutes.

A little further into the meal he remembered Conal, and decided to check on him. It didn't take much doing, as the Hufflepuff table was next to the Gryffindor one, and he only had to look around to see that June was going through the dishes with Conal to see which ones were okay.

Harry had to admit he was quite surprised to see Conal take a few slices of chicken, but then again he supposed that a centaur was half human as well as half horse. (Or maybe it was disrespectful to think like that and it was better to just say they were all centaur.)

Were horses entirely herbivorous in the first place? Harry thought so, but it was the sort of probably-someone-would-have-said thought so which he was trying to recognize as meaning he wasn't actually _sure_. So maybe he'd need to look that up.

Neville brought his attention to a small pie with a dragon flag on it, one of the special things the Hogwarts House-Elves cooked for him and one he hadn't noticed yet, and Harry sniffed it before taking a bite.

The tang to it was unexpected but delicious, and after thinking about it for a moment Harry realized that that was because about half of the filling was that nice kimchi stuff that sometimes turned up when Sirius got takeout in London.

Sirius didn't like it for some reason, but Harry did, and he had to wonder why it was a 'Harry-only' pie. It wasn't like it had iron shavings in it or something.

* * *

Finally, when the puddings had been cleared away, everyone sort of took on an expectant hush as they looked up towards the High Table.

Either someone was missing, or Hagrid had been made the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, or Professor Dumbledore simply hadn't had enough time to hire someone new. Any of them was a possibility, as far as Harry was concerned, and though he did like Hagrid he thought the big man probably wouldn't be ideal for teaching higher-year Defence.

He _would_ still be better than Mr. Lockhart, admittedly.

"Now, before we all head off to get some well-earned rest," Professor Dumbledore began, "I have a few announcements to make. First-"

He was interrupted by a loud BANG as the doors to the Great Hall opened.

The man who came through had one normal leg and one wooden leg, which thumped on the floor as he walked. He had one normal eye and one large electric-blue eye which seemed to be looking in all directions at once, and he had a tremendous network of scars across his face and a mane of dark grey hair.

Harry sort of thought that the man really needed some kind of thunderstorm going on as he entered the building, though, and the breezy summer night they'd been having just wasn't quite right.

It was almost a shame, because that could have been a really good entrance. But you couldn't just write the weather you wanted.

* * *

"Ah," Professor Dumbledore said, pleasantly, as the new arrival walked up the middle of the hall. "It seems my announcement about the school mascot had best wait for later."

He looked out across the hall. "I imagine some of you have noticed that Mr. Lupin is not with us, and – alas – that is not simply because he missed the train. Mr. Lupin has taken an unexpected leave of absence to spend more time with his newly discovered family, and to recover from some injuries suffered when he first met them. I am sure we all wish him a speedy recovery."

"What?" Colin whispered, baffled. "What happened? How can you discover a family and get injured – Harry, do you know?"

Harry was going to answer, but Dumbledore was speaking again.

"As a result of a quite inconveniently timed vacancy, I have approached my good friend Alastor Moody to take up the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. He was kind enough to agree so long as his contract expires at least two full months before the end of the school year, and I hope that we can expect Professor Lupin to be back with us by then."

Dumbledore turned to invite the new Professor Moody to speak, but the grizzled old wizard had already sat down and taken a drink out of a small flask.

It was nice to know that Remus hadn't lost his job because of what happened. Harry hadn't _thought_ Dumbledore would be that sort of person, but being sure of it was something else.

* * *

As the next few announcements were made, mostly the ones Harry had heard before about banned products and how not all dragons at the school were dangerous, he took the time to have a closer look at Professor Moody.

He sort of remembered Dora mentioning Professor Moody once before, mostly as a really famous dark-wizard-catcher who happened to be roughly as crazy as Professor Dumbledore in different ways, and by the looks of him he'd been hit by just about every curse in existence over the course of his career. It was kind of amazing to think that someone could do that and survive, especially without being a dragon, and he wondered what Professor Moody would have to teach them.

(Though admittedly 'duck' was probably not one of the things he was very good at, judging by the evidence.)

"Penultimately," Professor Dumbledore said, drawing his attention again, "and before we all get on to the singing that our choir has doubtless prepared, I wish to inform everyone that it will not be possible to hold the Quidditch Cup this year."

"You what?!" Fred demanded.

"I've only just made the team!" Ron agreed, sounding terribly offended.

The rest of Gryffindor didn't seem happy either, to say nothing of the other three houses, and Harry had to wonder just what could cause that.

Only Dean seemed at all pleased, and when Harry glanced at him his friend just said that he'd explain later.

"This is because of an event that will sadly be pre-empting it," Professor Dumbledore continued. "It is my great pleasure to announce that Hogwarts will be hosting the Triwizard Tournament this year."

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that, Professor?" George asked loudly. "I thought you said there'd be the Triwizard Tournament this year."

"Your hearing is as good as ever, I see, Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore told him, as muttering spread through the hall. "We are indeed to be hosting the Triwizard Tournament. I do hope it goes splendidly."

Professor Burbage coughed.

"Yes?" Dumbledore asked, turning. "Is there a problem?"

Harry didn't quite catch what the Muggle Studies professor said, but Dumbledore nodded before turning back to the students. "As I have just been reminded, not all of you will be fully aware of what the Triwizard Tournament actually _is_. Will those who already know please plug your ears, so you will not be dreadfully bored by what I will now say?"

Nobody did, and Dumbledore smiled. "Excellent. I do so dislike causing boredom."

He gave an explanation of what the Triwizard Tournament was – a competition between the magical schools at Beauxbatons, Durmstrang and of course Hogwarts, where champions represented their schools and competed in three magical tasks. The most skilled witches and wizards of each school also ended up spending much of the year over at the host school, to promote cultural unity, and Harry wondered if that meant that those most skilled witches and wizards were going to be spending most of their final year taking classes in another language.

Given how bad the Defence teachers had been at Hogwarts some years, it sounded like that might have caused problems. Harry could barely imagine how bad it would have been for a seventh-year from France to be taught Defence by Mr. Lockhart, and the idea it might have given them about what British wizards were like.

Then he mentioned how a lot of people had died in previous Triwizard Tournaments, and that they had been working very hard indeed to ensure that this time there was going to be no mortal peril.

Which sounded like a big improvement, though Harry did wonder if Muggles would ever want to re-start a tournament if people had died so often during the old version of it.

Had people died during the old version of the Olympics? It sounded sort of familiar.

* * *

The last bit of the announcement was how only people who were over seventeen years old would be allowed to take part, which a lot of people seemed quite offended by. Harry wasn't one of them, because it sounded _sort_ of interesting but he wasn't all that fussed, but then again it did seem a bit unfair to have such a high age limit on something that was only held every five years to begin with.

Wouldn't that mean that some students would never be able to take part at all? Harry and Neville would only be spending one school year at Hogwarts after turning seventeen, and Fred and George would actually be turning seventeen _this_ year but still wouldn't be able to compete.

It'd make more sense to Harry to have a _year_ limit, such as someone having to have done their OWLs, and then make it every other year instead of every five years. But maybe that made too much sense.

* * *

"So why are we going up this way?" one of the first-years asked. "The big stairs are over there."

"This way's quicker," Harry heard Colin explain, and there was a papery sound as he unfolded his copy of the Hogwarts Map. "Look, if you go up this way you skip a floor. It's kind of hard to remember, but it's really helpful."

"Where did you get that map?" someone else said. "Is it _moving?_"

"I wonder how good Mr. Moody is going to be as a teacher," Hermione said, and Harry switched his attention (and his ears) from listening to what was behind him to listening more generally to things around him.

"Blimey, that looked cool," Ron opined. "Can you do that again?"

Harry thought for a moment about what Ron might mean, then twitched his ears. He overdid it, though, and his glasses sprang up in the air for a moment before he managed to catch them as they landed.

Ron sniggered. "I feel like applauding," he explained. "Anyway, I think Dad talked about him once, he's really good at teaching you things if he doesn't think you're secretly an assassin out to kill him or something."

"What I don't know is why he's quitting two months before the end of the year," Hermione mused, sounding quite annoyed. "It's going to mean our education is a mess again, isn't it?"

"I think it's the curse," Neville pointed out. "Or is it a jinx? Anyway, Moody's supposed to be really paranoid, so that might be why."

"If I'd had the kind of life to get that many scars _I'd_ be paranoid," Dean suggested. "At that point it's just being, you know, sensible."

He frowned. "Actually, how does the jinx work, anyway? What have we seen so far?"

"Well, Quirrel imploded," Harry said, counting them off on his wing as they went from the third floor straight to the fifth floor without involving the fourth. "Lockhart got exposed as a fraud, and Remus got badly injured. But Sue D. Nym and that Auror we had to finish out our first year were fine. Maybe it only counts for people who do a whole year."

"Or people who start the year," Ron corrected. "Because two of them didn't make it through a whole year."

"Right," Dean agreed. "Why can't they just ditch Defence Against the Dark Arts and start a new class that does the same things? Like… Applied Defence, or Magical Protection?"

Hermione hissed through her teeth. "Oh, they tried that," she said. "It… didn't go very well. It even made it into _Hogwarts: A History."_

"It did?" Harry asked. "Blimey."

A lot of things _hadn't_ made it into _Hogwarts: A History_, because it had over a thousand years to cover. (Or over a thousand years between covers, that was another way to think of it.)

"What happened?" Dean said. "I'm kind of morbidly curious now."

"Well… he fell down the stairs," Hermione told them.

Ron stopped to look at her, until he realized he was standing in the way of about a hundred Gryffindors and got moving again. "You what? Fell down the stairs? That doesn't sound too bad."

"It was a previously unknown route through the castle," Hermione explained. "He fell for half an hour – and it was only about the fourth of September. He barely managed to teach more than his first class."

Harry winced.

He could see how that would be painful.

"Of course, the next teacher wasn't very _good_," Hermione continued. "Or that's what the books say. But she at least made it through the year."

* * *

"What I don't get is the thing with Quidditch," Fred grumbled in the common room. "The Triwizard Tournament is cool, and all, but unless one of our plans works neither of us is going to be able to take part."

"And there's definitely going to be at least twenty-seven Quidditch players who _aren't_ Hogwarts Champion," George agreed, taking up the thread of the argument. "Why can't the Quidditch tournament just go on without any changes?"

"Maybe it's something about the organization of the tournament," Cormac suggested. "You know, they need the pitch or something."

"How long are these bloody tasks going to be, then?" Ron demanded.

"Ron," Hermione cautioned him. "Watch your language around the first years."

"Sorry," Ron said.

Looking around, Harry could see that most of the Gryffindors weren't going up to bed yet – everyone was too interested in talking about the Triwizard Tournament, or in some cases their poor wounded Quidditch.

"Hmm..." Ron mused. "Hermione – any idea how long the tasks normally take?"

"Give me a minute," Hermione asked, shifted to Clever Girl, and went running up the stairs.

"What the crap?" one of the First Years asked. "What just happened? Did she turn into a _fluffy velociraptor?_"

"Yeah, she's an Animagus," Flopsy agreed, as Ron muttered something about language. "It's really cool if you ask us."

"I'm guessing you're Muggleborn?" Cottontail added.

The girl shook her head, suddenly a bit nervous.

"Halfblood, then," Flopsy guessed. "We talked about this last year. Muggles know a lot more about dinosaurs and stuff."

Hermione came running back down the stairs with a book. "According to _Magical Games And Tournaments, _the tasks are usually a few hours long – though they can involve a lot of time to prepare first."

She shrugged. "I've got no idea why they won't let you use the Quidditch pitch, sorry."

"Maybe now I can at least get a good footy tournament going instead," Dean suggested. "Or cricket? I think I know the rules and I bet some Beaters would love that."

"Don't Muggle referees have a white and black stripey uniform?" Ron said. "You could put paint on your feathers."

"Nev could put paint on his fur," Dean agreed. "Would _you_ want to argue the rules with a panther?"

"Not if he's got a sword," Harry contributed.

"Colin?" Dennis asked. "Why didn't you say how amazing this school was before?"

"I didn't know if you'd get a letter, Dennis," Colin answered. "I didn't want you feeling too jealous."

"But there's dragons and sphinxes and centaurs and cerberusses and I think I saw a giant squid in the lake!" Dennis protested. "And there's someone who turns into a _dinosaur!_"

"We're not actually a cerberus," Mopsy called. "It's a common mistake, but that's just a name."

"It's like how Pegasus was a specific winged horse," Cottontail agreed.

Dennis Creevey looked a little overwhelmed by it all, so Harry decided to suggest that maybe everyone should get to bed or they'd be too tired tomorrow morning.

With Percy gone, someone had to say it.

* * *

AN:

* * *

In keeping with my vaguely obsessive attitude to research, yes, I _did_ find a 1994 weather forecast for the first days of September.


	55. Dragons With Faculty

Breakfast, for Harry, was trying out something new that one of the House-Elves had come up with for him over the summer holidays.

As usual, this was indicated by a little dragon flag stuck in one of the dishes that appeared, but Harry was fairly sure that this time he wouldn't really have needed the hint – and nor, for that matter, would anyone else.

It wasn't like anyone else was likely to bite into a solid steel croissant, even without the little detail that it was also faintly glowing from the heat of the molten brass inside.

_Very_ carefully making sure he didn't spill any, Harry nibbled his way through the unusual breakfast while trying to work out how he could tell the eager elves that it was _nice_ but also probably too dangerous for the breakfast table… or, indeed, any table that could conceivably be referred to as 'old', 'valuable' or 'flammable'.

"Divination on Monday afternoon," Dean observed, checking his schedule. "That's going to be fun. I'll probably be told I'm doomed to die by having an airship crash on top of me."

"Airships?" Neville repeated. "Hold on… do you mean the big balloon-y ones, or the ones like Vingilot?"

"I've never heard of Vingilot," Dean confessed. "And yes, I mean the big balloon-y ones."

"Morning's not all that bad," Ron observed. "History of Magic is kind of a pain to start off the year with, but then it's Charms."

"Huh?" Neville replied, frowning down at his sheet, then snapped his fingers. "Oh, right. I forgot it's Friday. It's kind of easy to lose track during the holidays."

"Double Potions is going to be a problem," Dean opined. "Any idea what we're doing?"

Harry thought about it, and said he didn't know because their homework over the summer hadn't been focused on anything in particular.

"Hey, Dean?" Fred asked, drawing all of their attention. "Any ideas on how Fred and I could enter the Triwizard tournament without getting in trouble with the age restriction?"

"Honestly, it sounds pretty much impossible," Dean replied. "It's not like they don't know how old you are, it's going to be easy to check."

"Why did you ask Dean?" Neville asked, curious.

"He thinks in twisty ways," George explained. "Ways Wizards don't normally think of. It's really helpful."

"Thanks, I think," Dean chuckled.

"That's the spirit," Fred nodded. "Anyway, there's got to be _some_ way. Maybe that Polyjuice potion stuff?"

"Careful with that," Harry advised. "I only know one person who got involved with using Polyjuice and he ended up in prison for ten years."

"Technically I did introduce you to Scabbers," Ron pointed out. "So you sort of knew two."

"That's true," Harry admitted, graciously. "But he's probably going to prison for a lot _longer_ than ten years."

Their conversation was interrupted by Hedwig delivering four letters to Harry.

"How does she know where to pick up extra letters?" Hermione asked, a little confused, and Harry shrugged.

Hedwig was a particularly smart owl as far as he was concerned, and that was that.

The first letter was from Remus, saying that he hoped Harry was getting on well now he was back at school and talking a bit about how he'd started trying to teach the other werewolves the things he felt they needed to know. It wasn't easy to do much with just his wand from a hospital bed, but they'd started on basic mathematics, and Sirius had got some maths textbooks to help out with the whole process.

Harry was glad Remus was doing okay, and decided to either write or mirror-call him that evening.

Then there was a shorter letter from Hagrid that said how excited he was about something, but he seemed to sort of assume that Harry already knew what it was and that Harry would be as excited as him.

Harry thought he probably _would_ be excited if he knew what it was, but there wasn't nearly enough clarity there to actually tell for sure.

The third letter was from Sirius and was very short indeed, consisting mostly of a complaint about how Hedwig had dropped parchment and quill next to him and perched on the back of his chair looking baleful. (Harry wasn't really sure how much truth there was in that one.)

And finally Professor Dumbledore asked to see Harry whenever there was a break in his schedule, so long as that break in his schedule took place an hour after dinner today, or tomorrow at eleven in the morning, or Sunday at three in the afternoon. The letter also told Harry that the current password to the Headmaster's Office was 'Whoops' after an unfortunate mistake while changing it, but that by the time the letter arrived Harry should assume the password had become 'Aniseed'.

That sounded agreeable enough, so Harry decided to go there at the first opportunity.

Then they were off to get their things for History of Magic and Charms, because they may as well carry both sets of books rather than have to make an extra trip up and down at least ten flights of stairs. Or that was what Harry originally reasoned, but he was then reminded of the _additional_ advantage that Dean in particular had – which was that when he transformed all his things were just sort of merged into the magic of his alternate form, only to appear again afterwards.

It made it very easy indeed to carry an awful lot of books, and Harry wondered in an idle sort of way what the limit was – and if it worked the other way, as well.

Maybe Hermione could have a jacket she wore as Clever Girl that went away when she was in human form? It was an interesting idea, and one Harry decided not to mention to the Twins in case they used it for nefarious purposes.

Not that they or their rivals the Other Twins needed any help, because when everyone was going in and out of the common room getting books for their first lesson Harry happened to notice that both Weasley Twins had already somehow become facepainted.

"We'll get them, don't worry," was Fred's only comment when Harry pointed it out.

* * *

History of Magic started off with goblin rebellions, which was a bit of a surprise to Harry because he was fairly sure they'd already done those.

Then again, they _were_ getting on to their OWL years, so maybe the point was that now they were going to be doing it again once they had more of a background in it. That might be quite a good idea if it was what they were supposed to be doing, because Harry could remember some of what they'd done for history at Little Whinging JMI and he didn't think it would really work in a GCSE paper to say that the Greeks built 'with columns'.

It did seem like a lot of what Professor Binns was saying was very familiar, though, so Harry filed that under 'maybe'.

Then it was Charms, where Professor Flitwick told them that they were going to be moving towards charms designed for more specific situations. By way of demonstrating, he showed them first their first-year Levitation Charm and how it could slowly lift something and slowly move it about, then promptly moved on to the Summoning Charm which could pull something to him at speed from just about anywhere in the entire room – and the Banishing Charm as well, which could send something in the other direction just as fast and precisely.

What really impressed Harry about the Summoning Charm, however, was that because it was so focused it could also be almost _smart_. As Professor Flitwick helpfully demonstrated, you could put something in the pocket of a boy at the back of the room (Terry Boot) and Summon it, and it would whizz out of his pocket without damaging either itself or the pocket before curving gracefully into Professor Flitwick's hand.

He did however say that that depended on casting the spell _well_, and that a poorly cast charm _should_ just not attract the object but that it might well have direr consequences.

(At least it didn't sound like one of those consequences was 'flattened by a buffalo'; as far as Harry could tell the only situation where that could happen with a summoning charm was casting it correctly_. _On a buffalo_._)

* * *

Lunch came, and then went, although while it was still in the process of going Harry decided to go over and check with Conal how things were going for him.

"Oh, well… it's all a bit overwhelming," the centaur admitted, looking around the hall. "I've learned things before from my uncle, he likes teaching, but I've never been in a classroom before. And it seems like everyone else knows more than me."

Harry smiled slightly.

"They might," he said. "For about a week. That's how long it took before my wizard-raised friends didn't know any more about what was going on than my Muggle-raised friends and I."

That made Conal blink.

"Does that mean you were raised by Muggles?" he asked. "How?"

"They didn't notice I was a dragon," Harry explained. "_I_ sort of didn't notice, in a way, because nobody made a fuss about it."

Conal looked deeply baffled by that, and Harry decided to let him know about the oddly-shaped society meetings in case June hadn't told him about them. (She had, but it was probably okay to mention them more than once.)

One thing Harry was quite pleased to hear was that Conal actually had very few problems with the stairs – or, at least, no more problems than any of the other students who couldn't fly – in spite of his hooves. Conal also said that Madam Hooch had already asked to have a quick talk with him about brooms, to make sure they could develop what Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, June and Tanisis had done and get a cushioning charm properly rigged up for a centaur.

It all sounded like things were going nice and smoothly, which was lovely to hear and gave Harry a good feeling going into Potions.

* * *

"So, how was your summer?" Daphne asked, as Harry held down the Chinese Chomping Cabbage and she set about it with a very sharp knife.

"Well, I went to see the World Cup, but I think most people did," Harry replied. "I did get involved in stopping a riot, so that was interesting."

He'd also defeated an unknown percentage of Voldemort, but that didn't seem like something to boast about.

"Oh, yes, I heard about that," Daphne said, wincing. "We were over on the other side of the grounds, all we saw was a few flashes. And the Dark Mark, of course."

She took aim, and hacked the Chomping Cabbage in half with a two-handed blow. It stopped moving, and she examined the result critically.

"We need to divide it evenly, don't we?" she asked. "Does that look even?"

Harry put both of the big halves in the scales, one to a side, then began adding the shredded leaves to whichever side was higher.

"A group of my friends managed to get the head of the Department of International Magical Co-Operation in trouble," he added.

"I thought it must be them," Daphne said, nodding. "Not many dinosaurs in Britain. Right, that looks even. What's the next ingredient?"

"Scarab beetles, I think," Harry replied, not checking the board just yet. "They represent permanence, so that's supposed to be why the bones are durable. And then… no, it must be the puffer fish next, because you have to start with why the bones are alive, then grow them, _then_ make them durable."

They both checked their notes.

"Puffer fish," Daphne confirmed.

As he started preparing the puffer fish, a tricky process which involved stewing, Harry wondered why exactly it was that they were allowed to brew Skele-Gro in a Potions class when it was owned by a company.

Maybe it was just that only that company could _sell_ it. With how much magic let you just conjure things and make things and transfigure things, any wizard _could_ make anything if they studied enough… but most of them wouldn't bother when buying it was easier.

It wasn't really that different for Muggles, probably.

* * *

After potions, Harry washed his paws – as Professor Snape liked to remind him, potions ingredients weren't edible (much like death). Then it was dinner, and Harry ate quickly with an eye on the time.

Actually both eyes were on his food, and he occasionally checked the nearest watch (Ron's), but it was the thought that counted – he didn't want to be late to talk to Professor Dumbledore, because he knew how busy he was.

"Wonder how the House Elves will react when Beauxbatons students come over here," Ron mused, halfway through a pumpkin wellington.

"French food, probably," Dean shrugged. "You know, blancmange and stuff."

"Blancmange is French?" Neville asked. "Huh. Now I say that, it does sound obvious."

Ron sniggered.

"It might be nice if we had ratatouille," Hermione suggested. "French _food_ and French _cuisine_ are sort of different."

"No, what I meant was that they get happy enough to come up with ideas when there's just one dragon around," Ron explained. "Or two, counting Nora, but she mostly just gets meat. So if Beauxbatons bring some of their dragons..."

"Oh, right," Harry realized. "But wouldn't the dragons just sneak around the kitchen and take food that way?"

Hermione started giggling.

"Hogwarts food shortage," Ron suggested. "Filch baffled."

"All the house elves saying to themselves, I'm sure I put a pie over there," Dean supplied, and then everyone was laughing too much to continue.

They probably got some weird looks, but that was okay.

* * *

"Harry, lovely to see you," Dumbledore said, as Harry was climbing the stairs.

"You can see me, Professor?" Harry asked, pausing and looking at where he was.

It certainly _seemed_ that he was still some way down from the lip of the office.

"Well, no, but it _is_ lovely to see you every time I do," Dumbledore explained. "Please forgive an old man for anticipating the pleasure of your company."

Harry finished climbing the rest of the way, and Dumbledore smiled brightly at him. "Ah, excellent. Please take a seat, though do give it back when you're finished as I only have three."

Once Harry was seated, Dumbledore shook out both his hands before steepling them together and resting his chin on them. He looked at Harry for a few seconds, and the dragon tilted his head.

"Professor?" he asked. "Is something wrong?"

The bright smile returned to Dumbledore's face. "Ah, wonderful! I must confess, Harry, I was trying out a way to use body language – one language I've been unable to learn how to speak, as it involves no sound – and I thought I'd try it out."

Unsteepling his hands again, Dumbledore tapped his long chin with one of his fingers. "Now… I believe you have heard about the Triwizard Tournament?"

"Yes, Professor," Harry agreed, because it was true and because he had the idea that Dumbledore was going to go somewhere with that.

"There are two things that I will want to talk with you about, one regarding the Tournament," Dumbledore explained. "That one is one I will have to ask you to be secret about, while the second one is one which relates to poor Empress."

That made Harry frown, trying to work out what they could be.

"I trust Empress is well?" Dumbledore added.

"She's… alright," Harry summarized, after thinking about it for a bit. "I've been reading books to her, which I think has helped. I think there are things she still doesn't want to talk about, though."

"Well, perhaps this will help her feel better," Dumbledore mused. "You see, Harry, I wish to offer Empress a job."

Harry blinked.

"Pardon?"

"A job, of course, which she is well qualified for." Dumbledore adjusted his glasses slightly. "As I recall, it was Empress who taught and has been teaching young Nora to speak in Dragonish, or Parsel, or whatever term we may wish to apply to the language you may speak magically and which Nora and Hagrid have learned in their different ways."

Harry confirmed that with a nod.

"Well, then," Dumbledore smiled. "Thanks to the cooperation of the Department of International Magical Co-Operation, and our very own Hogwarts alumnus Charles Weasley, Hogwarts will be taking part in a project to see what it is precisely which results in dragons with whom one can hold a conversation. A number of dragon eggs shall be arriving in the due course of time, and I would like for Empress to provide the same education services for the hatchlings as she has done for young Nora."

"I'll ask her," Harry promised. "I don't know what she's going to say, but I'll ask her."

"Excellent," Dumbledore said pleasantly. "And since I see we have reached the second topic first, I believe we should cover the first topic second. You see, as the host school it largely falls to Hogwarts to arrange the three tasks of the Triwizard Tournament, and the original idea was to have a number of extremely large dragons involved in one of the tasks."

He smiled. "However, it occurred to me that we may have a rather simpler answer, in the form of Nora herself. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe she could be asked to do something quite complicated?"

"You'd have to make sure she understood it," Harry answered, thinking about that. "Is the idea to have her be the dragon for the task?"

"That is correct, Harry," Dumbledore concurred. "The broad idea is that the Champions should have to try to retrieve something from her, without of course injuring her as far as possible, and that she should in turn attempt to stop them without causing them too much distress. You have spoken to her more than I; do you think that is within her faculties?"

Harry had to think about that carefully, and about not only Nora but himself.

"It might depend on what her instincts say," he said, eventually. "She might forget about the bit about not hurting people, if she gets too excited. But I'm just saying that because it might happen, not because I've seen it happen to her. It's actually more like what happens with _me_ sometimes."

"A fair point, Harry, a fair point," Dumbledore agreed. "But I think we can certainly agree that Nora would be somewhat less dangerous than the dragons we were originally intending to use."

He stroked his beard. "I will not pressure you for a full answer to either question straight away. Go and think about them – and convey my offer to Empress, of course – and spend as much time as you like, though be careful you do not spend _so_ much time thinking about them that you forget to do your homework."

* * *

Getting back into the routine of doing homework was always a little tricky, just because of the long period of time when there hadn't really been a schedule over the summer.

Harry did his best, and so did the rest of his friends, but it was a bit hard not to discuss other topics.

"It seems like kind of a pity none of us will get a chance to be the Champion," Ron said, as they were all part way through a History of Magic essay about which Goblin Rebellion they considered the most important. "Even Ginny won't."

"Oh, because of how it's every five years?" Hermione checked. "It is a little odd… but there must have been that problem in the past as well."

She frowned. "But Ron, you must know it's going to be very dangerous."

Harry tried to not only not say anything but not make an expression, because he was now technically one of the people organizing a challenge.

"Well, yeah, but you're _really_ good at stuff," Ron explained. "So it'd be great if you got a chance – and Nev has that whole sword fighting thing, which I bet would look cool. And Dean thinks about things in cool ways and overpowers lots of spells – and Harry's a dragon."

He spread his hands. "So… you know?"

"Hey, you'd do pretty well too," Dean said. "You missed yourself."

"Yeah, but it doesn't sound as impressive if I'm talking _myself_ up," Ron explained.

Neville chuckled. "Good thing we all have each other for that."

"Is that a Gryffindor thing?" Harry asked. "Sorting out who's going to do that?"

"Don't know," Dean mused. "What house was Lockhart in?"

"Goblin rebellions," Hermione reminded them.

* * *

Much later that night, after almost everyone had gone to bed and the common room was almost deserted – only a couple of particularly late-working seventh years in the other corners – Harry got out his mirror and his dragon picture.

"Empress," he said. "Good evening."

"_Good evening,"_ the ancient basilisk replied, straight away. _"Was something wrong yesterday?"_

"Sorry," Harry said, wincing. "I forgot to let you know that it was the first day back at school and that I might not have a chance to talk."

There was a long hiss, which didn't get translated into words. _"That's all right,"_ Empress said eventually.

"I should have said," Harry told her, wanting to make that clear. "And… oh, there's something that Professor Dumbledore wanted me to tell you."

"_There is?"_ the basilisk asked, and Harry felt the knot of tension inside him unwind a bit.

After disappointing her – even by mistake – it was good to know that she was interested in what he had to say.

"There's going to be a project to see if other dragons can learn to talk like Nora," he told her. "I think as far as most people are concerned it's going to be whether there's something special about Hogwarts, but what Dumbledore wants to do is offer you a teaching job."

The silence that resulted was so long that Harry looked at the mirror again – wanting to see if it had turned off, though he had no way to tell.

"_Pardon?"_ Basilissa asked.

"A teaching job," Harry reiterated, just to make sure he hadn't said it wrong the first time. "He'd like you to try and teach the other dragons Parsel, or Dragonish, or whatever you want to call it."

"_That's… quite an idea,"_ she said, eventually.

"I'm not sure what you'd be paid," Harry added. "I said I'd ask, though, and see what you thought."

"_I'm going to need to think about that,"_ Empress told him. _"It's just… such an odd idea."_

There was a slight slithering sound. _"Would that mean I had to set homework? My – the others sometimes complained to me about their teachers setting them useless homework."_

"I don't think so," Harry said.

"_Sorry, I missed that."_

Harry realized he'd stopped looking at his dragon picture, and started doing that again so he would be speaking the right language when he repeated himself.

"_Do you mind if we do a bit more of that story, while I think?"_ she asked, after a moment more. _"I want to know what happens to the Weyr and if that R'Gul will stop being foolish."_

"Of course," Harry assured her, and opened _Dragonflight._ "There's a bit of a poem to start this section._ 'Honour those the dragons heed, in thought and favour, word and deed. Worlds are lost, and worlds are saved, from the dangers dragon-braved.'_"

There was another little slithering sound, this one much quieter. Harry imagined Basilissa adjusting herself to be more comfortable, and then started reading the story itself.

* * *

The weekend was that odd sort of weekend that happened when you were back at school, but you were back at school for such a short time before the weekend that it sort of felt like you'd had a day of school right before the end of the holidays.

For Harry, it meant being able to really spend some time on flying around Hogwarts (and going to visit Fort William, to see if the library had anything new) and watching the Quidditch team practice, because Oliver Wood was gone but everyone knew that if they skipped an entire year then they'd be rusty for the 1995-6 season.

Cormac tried to assert that he was now the captain, but Angelina told him that that wasn't going to happen because – while a valuable reserve – he wasn't a member of the active team. Also he was younger than her, and also he could be the coach.

(Harry was quite impressed with how she'd made those arguments, because she'd managed to convince Cormac without letting him get a word in edgeways.)

Cormac immediately suggested that they should see if there was anyone who was a good Chaser or Beater in the second and third years who hadn't been noticed yet, or a Keeper if they found one – they were, apparently, 'good for Seekers' - and try and make a total of two teams, one front line and one reserve, as that would give them enough players to actually play a few games. It sounded like a good idea as far as Harry was concerned, though he did wonder if enough people would be willing to take part.

Maybe without Oliver Wood the practice schedule would be a bit more sensible.

* * *

On Monday it was the first Herbology lesson of the year, and Professor Sprout proudly unveiled their first plant.

It revelled in the slightly uninspiring name of 'bubotuber', and their task was to squeeze them to produce pus – pus that, it seemed, would be useful in the treatment of acne.

Harry hadn't ever _had_ acne – it seemed like a mammal thing – but he had to wonder whether if (if he _did_ have acne) he'd just have not bothered. Though apparently Eloise Midgen had somehow removed her nose attempting to curse away her acne, so maybe it was much more itchy than Harry had heard.

Then Harry and his friends split, with Harry, Hermione and Dean going to Care of Magical Creatures while Ron, Hermione and Neville went to Muggle Studies. That meant staying outside for Harry, and it also meant his first encounter with a Fire Crab.

It was quite a sight. On first sight it looked like some sort of giant crab, hence the second part of the name, but the shell was more like that of a tortoise – except that it was covered with jewels and looked really rather attractive. It put Harry in mind of Smaug's jewelled waistcoat, though obviously in a different sort of way.

Their textbook said it looked like a tortoise, but Harry thought it was more of a crab overall.

"This is a little more dangerous than the creatures you've met so far!" Professor Kettleburn said brightly.

"You what?" Dean asked. "We started this class by meeting a _Norwegian Ridgeback_."

"And she was very well behaved!" Professor Kettleburn said. "But this one isn't – you'll want to watch out for the tail, it shoots flames that could scorch your skin off. But feel free to get closer – one of the ways to identify a Fire Crab is the specifics of the jewels on the shell. What type do you think this one is?"

"Um…" someone began, looking at the blue glitter. "Sapphire?"

"I did say you should get closer," Professor Kettleburn cautioned. "Perhaps might be a good idea to apply a flame-freezing charm first, though… you do know that one, I hope?"

Fortunately the answer was yes, and it transpired that this particular Fire Crab was a lapis lazuli. They had to inspect the shell for any broken or rounded-off jewels, since that would indicate possible health problems, and then Professor Kettleburn demonstrated how you could approach a Fire Crab without provoking it enough to make it blast flames at you.

That might, as he put it, be 'on the test'.

* * *

The afternoon brought Divination, or Arithmancy if you weren't Dean, or neither if you were Ron (or both if you were Hermione, who Harry reminded to get extra rest as well in case she'd forgotten). Professor Vector told them that this year they'd start working on the maths involved with spell structure, and that by next year they'd be expected to be able to perform the calculations involved with some basic spells and be able to show what would happen if the spells were modified in certain ways.

Harry didn't have the slightest clue how that was going to be tested, but he was interested in learning, and fortunately it didn't seem like they were going to change to a whole new way of doing maths just after learning the first one. Instead it was what were called surds, multiplying and dividing square roots, and it was sort of neat that you could just turn two into the square root of two times the square root of two, treat those as different numbers, and move them around. So the square root of six times the square root of ten became the square root of sixty, which was twice the square root of fifteen, and it was only at the end of all that that they looked up what the square roots were in big books full of numbers.

It was a bit easier to just use Harry's calculator, to check he'd got it right, but it wouldn't be allowed in the exams so he had to learn how to do it with the books anyway.

* * *

"Well, apparently I'm going to die," Dean reported at dinner. "But that's nothing unusual for me."

"What was it this time?" Ron asked.

"She said that a crow is a sign of bad luck," Dean replied. "Which, you know, means death. Like how a big black dog is a sign of death."

He shrugged. "I sort of wonder if there are any omens of bad luck that _aren't_ black."

"I think hanging a horseshoe with the ends pointing down is a sign of bad luck," Harry said, trying to remember. "Because the luck falls out. Or is it hanging it with the ends _up_ is a sign of bad luck, because the devil stays in it?"

"According to the book _Signs Of The World_, in one Native American culture it's bad luck for an owl to fly over your house," Hermione told them, cutting up some variety of croute into slices.

"Well, blimey, that's our mistake!" Neville said. "We've got owls, um, owl over the place?"

"That was bad," Ron sniggered.

Hermione started going through a few other bad luck omens from around the world, like the unlucky numbers (interestingly nine was lucky in some places and unlucky in others) but Harry was suddenly distracted by an odd thought.

Horses in the wild didn't need horse shoes, but horses which humans were riding around did. It was something to do with how hard ground like roads did more damage to horse hooves than softer ground did, though Harry didn't remember all the details because most of the books he'd read didn't focus _that_ much on horses – and the ones which did, like the _Warhorse of Esdragon_, were mostly about how the warhorse in question didn't care about following any of the normal rules for horses.

That meant that walking around on the hard stone of Hogwarts floors _might_ be a problem for Conal, but Harry wasn't sure how to raise it as an issue.

Maybe it would have to wait until the society meeting.

* * *

Tuesday saw Harry's first Runes class of the new year, where Professor Babbling told them that a part of their OWL grade would be based on actually designing a runic object.

She stressed that that didn't mean they were going to be _making_ one, necessarily, because the techniques required to get the carving exactly correct were so fiddly to use and required so much time. But what they _were_ going to be doing was designing one – laying out all the runes that would need to be added to the designated object, and writing up all the ways that those runes could interact and what those interactions would mean. The more depth the better, though it would also of course help if the object was designed to do something useful and didn't have any noticeable side effects.

It sounded like quite a daunting thing to do, to Harry, though they _did_ have a full two years to think about it and work on it so perhaps it wasn't as bad as it sounded at first.

Then for the rest of the lesson they were revising the meanings of the Furthark runes, and Harry wondered about what he'd like to make.

A magic sword, like Neville was interested in, sounded like a fun idea. But maybe a magic shield would be better?

But then again, Neville had ended up not doing Runes in the first place, so it might be nice to try and make him something.

That led Harry to wonder about how magical a magical sword he was thinking of. Because you had some really not-very-impressive magical swords in some books, where the only thing you could really notice was that they glowed sometimes, and then other times you had flaming swords or swords that could be thrown two thousand miles and hit their target or that sort of thing.

Maybe the best person to ask about that would be Neville.

* * *

That day also saw George and Fred telling them about how great Professor Moody was as a teacher. Harry didn't have him until Thursday, making it the very last first class of the year – after even Astronomy – but it sounded like it would be an interesting one, as Professor Moody was a real veteran and could apparently get everyone interested. Even Tom Riddle hadn't managed that last bit.

"He _knows_," Fred emphasized.

"I should hope he does, some of our teachers have been terribly underqualified," Hermione said primly, drawing out lines on a week chart.

It looked to Harry like she was trying to work out her sleep schedule, which was much more complicated than it would be for anyone else.

"I mean he _gets_ it," Fred clarified. "And you really get that in his class."

"Like what?" Ron asked.

"You have to see for yourself," George told him. "I can't explain it."

Ron snorted, shaking his head. "That's helpful..."

"You can't be _told_ about this," Lee Jordan supplied. "That's why we didn't tell you, until we decided you _had_ to know."

"You realize that makes no sense, right?" Dean checked.

"Yeah, but why let that get in the way of spreading the word?" Lee asked.

Neville raised a hand.

"Longbottom, Gryffindor," Fred invited.

"Just asking," he explained. "So you realize it's making you sound kind of like he's a leader of one of those Muggle things?"

"...no, not really," George shrugged. "On account of how I for one have no idea what kind of Muggle thing you could possibly be talking about."

"Cults?" Harry asked.

"Cults, that's it," Neville agreed. "Like he's brainwashing you or something."

"No, that's next lesson," Fred said.

Ron blinked. "I… can't tell if that was serious or not."

"Silly Ron, Sirius is Padfoot," Fred corrected him.

"No, I mean – prats," Ron groaned. "Does he teach that to everyone?"

"Seems like," Lee said. "I think he might start handing out pamphlets soon."

"So where does he go compared to the other teachers we've had?" Harry asked.

"Definitely better than Lockhart and Quirrell," George said, after a moment's thought. "You don't know the ones before that, so… I reckon he's better than Moony, a bit, though he did say Moony was good. And Miss Nym was really focused on duelling, he's more about _defence."_

Fred shrugged. "And that Podmore bloke was sort of just filling time, so I'd say Moody's better than him."

It took a long moment for Harry to remember which one Podmore had been, largely by a process of elimination.

"Pity we've only got him until April, really," Lee added. "Mind you, if we had him until June he'd probably catch fire or turn out to be evil or secretly two hundred hamsters in a suit or something."

"Or two hundred evil hamsters in a suit that catches fire," George said.

"Is that an or?" Neville checked. "It sounds like an and."

"Neville," Hermione chided.

"What?" Neville asked.

"You know I've always said, wizards aren't very good at logic," she answered smugly.

Nobody laughed, which left her sighing and saying something about how it was actually a funny joke if you knew what she was going for.

* * *

"Look at this," Ron said, then got his wand out. "_Lumos._ See, there's these photographs the Muggles took of one of them hitting Jupiter."

Professor Sinistra leaned closer, smoothing out the magazine pages, and for a long moment she just stared.

"Goodness, that's an enormous explosion," she said. "You can see it growing, and – yes, these pictures are quite small but that flash must have been very big for it to appear at all."

"I think one article said the biggest one made a dark spot seven and a half thousand miles across," Ron said.

"You what?" Gregory demanded. "That's… that's huge!"

"How big's the Earth?" Justin checked.

"About, um, six thousand miles across?" Hermione said. "Something like that."

The whole Astronomy class was silent for a long time, thinking about that.

"So… if it hit us, there wouldn't be an Earth left?" Blaise asked. "How long have Muggles known about this?"

"A few years, sort of," Ron told him. "Well, some Muggles."

"Then why haven't they fixed the problem yet?" Theo Nott demanded. "They should be doing something!"

"They are trying, it's just that space is really big," Harry said.

"You might think it's a long way down to Hogsmeade, but that's just peanuts to space," Hermione added, then started trying to stifle a giggle.

"Well… I think that's given us all quite a lot to think about," Professor Sinistra said. "Thank you, Mr. Weasley. Now, I believe we should do some revision… perhaps covering distances inside the solar system? That sounds like a productive lesson."

* * *

AN:

* * *

Hermione's not quite correct on the Earth's diameter, but she's going from memory.


	56. Moody, Teenage, Dragon

After getting up a bit late on Thursday, and going through the morning's one lesson (Transfiguration), Harry pondered over lunch just what Professor Moody was going to be like.

He kept almost confusing Moony and Moody, not because they were similar people (though they might be, he didn't know yet, that was the point) but because they had similar names and the same job. Maybe if he tried to think of Professor Moody by a nickname, like Moony was, but the only nickname he knew for Professor Moody was "Mad Eye" and that didn't sound very pleasant.

Everyone else seemed excited or interested as well, talking about it more or less constantly, and somewhat to Harry's surprise everyone had arrived outside the lesson room at least ten minutes before the bell.

"What does anyone actually know about our new Professor?" Blaise asked, as they waited. "I only know what Mother's said."

"Honestly, that's more than me," Neville said.

"Oh, well, Mother seems to think he'd make a good husband," Blaise answered him. "And a good challenge."

"He doesn't look the best," Lavender pointed out critically. "Are you sure your mother _would_ want to marry him?"

"She said she'd like to," Blaise shrugged. "Briefly."

"I'm not sure this is going to be any good," Draco opined loudly. "A washed-up old has-been? What could he teach?"

"**To pay attention!"**

Everyone jumped. Harry's wings flared out, nearly knocking Dean and Daphne over, and he quickly apologized to both before looking in the direction the voice had come from – over by one of the suits of armour, out of the way of the main corridor.

Their Professor shrugged off an Invisibility Cloak, fixing them all one at a time with both his mismatched eyes.

"Let that be a lesson to the lot of you," he added grimly, as the bell began to ring. "In you go."

Slightly worried now, Harry joined the others in filing into the Defence classroom and taking a seat. He got out his textbook, as well, and by the time he had done everyone was sitting down in their seats.

Professor Moody walked slowly into the room, the wooden _thump_ of his leg against the stone floor loud in the near silence, and regarded them all with a stern stare.

"This class," he began, "is called Defence Against the Dark Arts. Some of you – maybe even all of you – need to think about what that means."

"We-" Ron began, then subsided with a muffled _ow_. Harry had the sudden suspicion that Hermione had just given him a kick in the shins.

"I don't mean you can't defend yourself, Mr. Weasley," Professor Moody said. "I'm quite aware of what happened last year."

His blue eye roved all over the place, sometimes appearing to focus on one thing in particular (though that thing wasn't necessarily in the room) before moving on to somewhere else.

"The problem," he said, sternly, "is that there is a pervasive idea that this is a _school subject._ Something which you learn about for a few hours a week and otherwise forget. But real dark wizards, real dark creatures, real _threats_, don't come on a schedule. There is no slot in your school calendar that says a troll will attack… and as those of you at the World Cup will have found out, dark wizards can be anywhere. Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Malfoy?"

"I don't know what you're insinuating, Professor," Draco said.

"I didn't know I was insinuating anything, Mr. Malfoy," Professor Moody replied. "Guilty conscience?"

After a moment's pause, he suddenly slammed his hand down on the teacher's desk. Everyone jumped again, and after a bit of thought Harry turned himself forty-five degrees to the table so that if that happened again his wings wouldn't flare into someone.

"You should always be vigilant," he informed them. "_Constant_ vigilance is the only way to avoid being surprised."

He let that hang in the air for a few seconds more, then sat down.

"I've been over your subjects and marks from last year," he said. "Those of your former professors who are not in prison – and still_ alive – _have been kind enough to fill me in, and it's clear to me you're good for Dark Creatures. Your duelling's not too shabby either, but we'll be working on that… but the place where you're _most_ behind is curses. So that's where we'll start… can anyone tell me the difference between a jinx, a hex and a curse?"

Hermione put her hand up, as did about half the class, though Harry didn't because he couldn't quite remember the exact definition. It was one of those things that was sort of fiddly and had a lot of exceptions, and Professor Moody called on two or three people to get their definitions before ultimately shaking his head.

"I'm disappointed at you," he said. "Who here remembers that the Defence Against the Dark Arts job is _jinxed? _And look what happened to your last few teachers who tried to go for the whole year..."

* * *

As Harry had thought, and as their teacher explained, the difference between the three was a bit more complicated than just hexes being worse than jinxes and curses being worse than hexes. Most curses were pretty nasty to be hit with, though, often sounding as much designed for cruelty as anything, and over the course of the first hour of the lesson Harry slowly realized that the Fiendfyre he'd been taught – for all it was extremely dangerous – was probably one of the more pleasant curses out there.

Which was quite a thought.

Eventually, though, Professor Moody told them they were most of the way through the class, and added that they were going to be shown some illegal dark curses. It seemed that Professor Dumbledore thought it was okay to at least show them what the curses looked like, so they knew, though Harry had to admit that even though he agreed with the _idea_ he felt uncomfortable about the whole thing.

Maybe it was because of what he'd read about the curses, and how you needed the right visceral desires – like hatred – to make them work. Even if it was sort of understandable why Professor Moody had those emotions, after so long fighting dark wizards, it still sounded a bit unpleasant.

* * *

For most of the curses, Professor Moody cast them silently and without waving his wand at all. He said that made the curses much weaker, but that it could be useful to do that sort of thing in an actual fight – but, more importantly, that he wasn't teaching them _how_ to cast things like the entrail-shrivelling curse. That seemed to disappoint Draco, who loudly said that at _Durmstrang_ they actually taught the Dark Arts instead of this ridiculous Defence stuff, and Moody countered with the interesting rhetorical trick of asking Draco if he'd like to be the target of a Muteness Jinx.

Or possibly hex. Harry wasn't sure which one of those it technically was, even after the explanation.

With about fifteen minutes left in the lesson, Professor Moody asked them if they knew what the three Unforgivable Curses were. Harry was sure Draco had to know, but most of the Slytherins didn't seem interested in volunteering the information.

Hermione was, of course, and she mentioned the Imperius curse. Then it was Neville, who paused for a few seconds after being called on before finally saying that the second one was the Cruciatus curse.

Surprisingly, that got him a smile from their Professor, and then he asked if anyone knew the last one.

Blaise's hand went up. "Surely we should just ask the dragon who survived it, Professor?"

Professor Moody snorted. "Surviving a curse doesn't tell you what it is, boy. If it did I'd know even more curses than I actually do, and I know a lot of curses."

"It's obviously the killing curse," Theo Nott declared loudly. "What else is it going to be?"

Harry put up his paw, suddenly slightly confused.

"Professor?" he asked. "I'm not really sure I understand why it's _those_ three curses that are Unforgivable, and not, um, _using_ a curse to kill someone, for example."

"Good question, lad," he was told. "Lots of dark curses should be punished worse than they are, in my mind. But it comes back to that bit about how you feel."

He banged a fist on the desk. "To even cast the Imperius Curse, you've got to have a fair bit of magic, but more importantly you've got to _want_ that person under your control. It's a dark, nasty spell, and I'm a dark, nasty sort of person because I _can_ cast it. To cast the Cruciatus Curse, you've got to feel some kind of _joy_ at seeing someone in pain, and to cast the Killing Curse you've really got to want them _dead_. Not because you think it's for the best, but because you'd _enjoy_ it."

Harry swallowed.

"Now," Professor Moody added, a little more softly. "Dumbledore wants you all to see these curses, so you know what to expect, but I won't force you. Anyone who wants can leave the class – go on, off you go, there's not long left and your friends can tell you what the homework is."

Nobody moved, and after giving it a good thirty seconds Professor Moody got out three jars with spiders in them. He demonstrated each of the Unforgivable curses, one on each spider, and they all left Harry's blood feeling a bit chilled.

He sort of felt sorry for the spiders, really.

Then he told them all that next lesson he'd be demonstrating the Imperius Curse on anyone who didn't specifically _not_ want it done to them.

* * *

Harry had to admit that Professor Moody had a quite different style to Remus. It was much harsher, not because he was a _nasty_ teacher but because he was so intense and focused on teaching them what he felt they needed to know.

It was at least much better than both Professor Quirrell and Professor Lockhart, and probably… Mr. Podmore, Harry thought it was, from the end of first year.

Going back to what the Unforgivable Curses were, it was kind of funny because in some of the fantasy books he'd read (where there was a lot of magic going around) spells which did what the Unforgivable Curses did would have been classified completely differently from each other.

The Killing Curse was nasty because you had to really viscerally want your target dead, but a spell that just killed someone – straight away – would arguably be nicer than a lot of the actual fighting in some of those books. And the Imperius Curse was mind control, but that was the sort of thing that would be just 'quite bad' - after all, in some of the Anne McCaffrey books there were bits with people being made to do things, and it was sort of 'bad' rather than awful.

The Cruciatus Curse was just horrible, though.

* * *

Two days later, Harry left Dumbledore's office late in the afternoon feeling quite pleased with himself.

Empress had thought it over and decided to accept, and so Harry had been called upon to help schedule a meeting where he was both the translator and the one who controlled how Professor Dumbledore and Empress could even talk to one another. It sort of made him wonder if that classified him as a Protocol Droid, which was a funny thought – as a dragon he'd be more likely to have a pile of gold than be made of gold, and as it happened he _did_ have a pile of gold so that was that – and a surprising amount of the conversation had been about how much money was worth to Empress and what she could use it to do.

Eventually the agreement they'd reached was that Dumbledore would talk with the House-Elves to see about getting her some more varied food – it seemed that there had been a thousand-year-old standing order to provide her with a meal a few times a year, though probably none of the Elves actually remembered why or what – and most of her salary would be going to a Gringotts Vault until such time as she discovered something she'd actually like to spend it on.

The other thing was that Professor Dumbledore promised to turn as much of his time as he could spare to working out a way that Empress could actually safely come out of the Chamber of Secrets and connected passages and instead see what the world outside was like. That meant firstly coming up with a very definite way to make sure she was safe when a rooster crowed (and short-term it meant moving the roosters away from Hogwarts entirely, to be better safe than sorry) and secondly coming up with an equally definite way to ensure that her gaze was one hundred percent safe.

Apparently Professor Dumbledore actually had come up with a way to prevent someone from being _petrified_, if they weren't looking at her directly, and it involved the use of Mandrake potion. A single brew diluted in water could last for weeks as a regular drink to ensure someone was instantly unpetrified, but that method didn't really scale properly and it would no doubt be very dangerous to pets.

Still, it felt like things were moving forwards for Empress, and that was probably the best news she'd had all century.

* * *

"Hmm..." Conal said, frowning down at one of his hooves. "I think there's a bit of a difference."

"It's because of the hard stone, I think," Harry said. "And, well… if there's damage, you sort of need someone who's specially trained to deal with it? I think?"

"Uncle Firenze is one of the clan who knows how to take care of an injured hoof, so I've always gone to him," Conal replied. "But yes, if something happens here I might not be able to reach him."

Anna sniggered.

"Nothing, nothing," she said, when Harry and the first-year looked at her in confusion. "It's not about the idea of you being hurt."

"I'm glad to hear it," Conal smiled, then returned his gaze to the hoof in question. "But there was something else?"

"Yeah, um..." Harry wondered just how to put this. "I think… well, I think your hooves need to be protected from wearing away, because otherwise that's what will happen as they get worn faster than they grow."

Conal winced, shivering a little. "That sounds very unpleasant."

"I agree," June agreed. "Claws aren't even something that really feels pain, but thinking about not having them is really… ergch."

"I think I should write that word down," Luna announced. "It might make a good crossword clue."

"What, ergch?" June asked, trying her best to recreate the sound.

"Yes, that's it exactly," Luna smiled. "How do you spell it?"

"Well… um, hold on," June said, and started mumbling to herself. "Maybe with an E…?"

"How could I stop that happening?" Conal asked. "Is there a way to do it?"

Taira looked like he was about to explode, then shifted into his fox-form and put both paws over his muzzle.

"Well, there _is_," Harry said, wincing. "But it would probably need to be a bit different for you, because the closest thing we have is, um… horse shoes."

Conal frowned, thinking about that.

"I can see why," he said. "I can't imagine what Bane would say."

"Aww," Anne sighed, as her brother shifted back to human-shaped. "We were really hoping it'd be funnier when you actually had to say the words."

"Yeah, watching you trying not to say it was funnier than you saying it," Tyler contributed.

Conal gave them both a bemused look. "...right," he said.

"What about something more like human shoes?" Tanisis suggested. "So they're laced on, or secured with a sticking charm maybe, and they've got material that takes the impact instead of a hoof."

That sounded like a good idea to Harry, and he said so.

"I wonder where we could get them from," Luna added. "That's not me saying that, that's actually what Tiobald says. But I'm saying it as well, now that I come to think of it, because I agree with it."

"Are you allowed to do that?" June asked, her tongue lolling out a bit in a canine laugh.

"I don't see why not," Luna replied.

"Maybe Hagrid could help," Harry said. "Or Professor Kettleburn, of course. They're both experts on magical creatures, and Hagrid's quite good at making things as well."

He started to say something else, but then stopped when he remembered that thestrals had claws instead of hooves and therefore wouldn't be good experience with hoofed animals. But maybe unicorns would be?

It was a little hard to imagine a unicorn with hoof problems, though… unless it was the one from _Lords and Ladies_, which Jason Ogg had put silver horseshoes on.

"Hagrid _is_ really good at stuff like that," Flopsy volunteered. "Come on, we'll take you down to see him as soon as the meeting's over."

"I think he knows the way, Flopsy," Mopsy chided gently.

"Doesn't mean he won't want company," Flopsy replied, sticking her tongue out.

Cottontail shook her head slightly.

* * *

The week rolled on, Harry and his friends getting used to their new schedule – and the occasional surprise, such as when Professor Kettleburn introduced them all to the three familiar faces of Fluffy on Wednesday afternoon – but the main thing that Harry's mind kept going back to was the coming Defence lesson.

Facing the Imperius Curse sounded daunting, and the idea that someone might actually want to put it on him seriously was worrying as well. It was sort of an odd situation, because the fact that Professor Moody was going to be demonstrating it on them was like the _proof_ that someone might want to put it on them seriously one day. (Because if that wasn't likely to happen then he wouldn't need to show them.)

It meant that Harry gave serious thought to the idea of saying that, no, he didn't want to take part in that bit of the lesson. But it sounded worse to run into the Imperius Curse without at least knowing what it was going to be like, and it didn't sound like a very Gryffindor thing to say no.

"Does it sound like any House to say no?" Dean asked, when Harry voiced that thought over lunch. "I mean, Hufflepuff are loyal, so if one of them says no then it's not being loyal."

"Unless they all say no at once," Ron pointed out. "But it's not very Slytherin, is it?"

"Depends how Slytherin you're thinking," Dean shrugged. "If you don't want to look suspicious, you'd want to do it – right?"

"Maybe," Harry frowned. "Or maybe you think people would know that you'd be doing it because you didn't want to look suspicious, so you don't do it?"

"Watch it, guys, I don't want to go _into_ this lesson with a headache," Neville snorted. "What about Ravenclaw?"

"Seems pretty simple to me," Hermione said, looking up from her latest book. "Stereotypical Ravenclaws just want to find out what it's like."

She looked back down, and Ron glanced at what she was reading – then did a double-take. "Hermione?"

"Yes, Ron?" Hermione replied, putting a bookmark in her book and closing it.

"Why are you reading _The Lord of The Rings_?" he asked. "I thought you'd be revising."

"I am," Hermione said simply. "The bit about the One Ring's influence. I want some tips."

"Is that realistic?" Dean asked. "I know magic is real, but the other stuff."

Harry carefully didn't say anything about Horcruxes.

* * *

"Right," Professor Moody said, once everyone had arrived at the lesson. "Any of you who don't want to take part in this demonstration, over that side of the room. You can still learn something by watching."

About half the Slytherins stood up, Draco among them, and Moody chuckled.

"Is something funny, Professor?" Draco asked.

"Just thinking," Moody replied, leering slightly. "Suppose you'd know all about this spell already, with your father."

"My father was a tragic victim of the Imperius Curse in the last war," Draco protested. "I don't want the same thing to happen to me."

"Then you should be learning how to resist it, shouldn't you?" Moody said.

Draco scoffed slightly, but didn't actually reply.

Harry wasn't really sure who he was sympathetic to there. He had to admit that if his father had been caught by the Imperius Curse, he wouldn't be very interested in it happening to him… but he wasn't at all sure that Mr. Malfoy actually _had_ been controlled by the Imperius Curse during the last war. (Part of that was because Sirius said he hadn't been, but Harry was going to just say he was unsure.)

"Nobody else want to?" Moody asked, then stumped over to the side of the room away from where Draco and the other Slytherins were. "Then the rest of you come over here. Let's try… you first, Sally Perks."

"Sally-Anne Perks, Professor," Sally-Anne replied, quietly but firmly. "They're both part of my first name."

"Hm," the Professor said, non-committally. "See if _I_ try to use a first name again. Right then… _Imperio._"

Sally-Anne's eyes unfocused, and then she started doing a pirouette.

"I didn't know she could do that," he said, mostly to himself.

"She can't," Parvati informed him. "I saw her try once, and she never said she was learning."

Professor Moody broke the spell, then, and Sally-Anne swayed a bit before leaning on a chair.

"Feels odd, doesn't it?" Moody asked.

"It felt like I was floating," Sally-Anne reported. "Then you said to do something, and it was just… so easy to do it."

"That's how it works," Moody confirmed. "Who next… Longbottom."

Neville swallowed, but took Sally-Anne's place.

"This should be interesting," Draco drawled.

"_Imperio,"_ Professor Moody incanted.

Neville's eyes unfocused a little as well, then suddenly he was a panther.

"Merlin-!" Moody yelped, jumping backwards and holding his wand ready, and after a frozen moment most of the class started laughing.

"Did you not know he was an Animagus, Professor?" Seamus asked. "Seems to me it'd be an easy thing to find out."

"There's a lot of information out there about what wizards can and can't do, Finnegan," Moody growled. (Harry thought it was quite a good growl, better than his.) "Much of it nonsense – as if you hadn't learned that from that fraud Lockhart."

Neville had shifted back from Lapcat while their teacher was talking, and shrugged. "You said to act like a cat, Professor…"

"Good point," Moody said, cheering up about as much as seemed possible for him. "If you can't ignore the instructions, make them mean something else to you. Now… Zabini."

* * *

Blaise ended up doing a handstand, which sent two Bezoars and a bottle of antivenom clattering across the classroom floor. Then Parvati sang something which Harry vaguely recognized as being by the Weird Sisters, and Seamus followed that up by jumping up onto the nearest desk.

During all this Harry had been mulling something over, and he raised his paw.

"Potter," Professor Moody called. "You have a question?"

"Can the Imperius Curse make you do something you _couldn't_ otherwise do?" he asked.

"Good question, Potter," Moody told him. "If you don't _think_ you can do it, but you're told to by an Imperius curse, you might be able to anyway. But it doesn't make you stronger, or faster, or taller, and you can hurt yourself trying to follow the instructions because you do it anyway even if it hurts."

That sounded like another of the reasons why the Imperius Curse would be a _curse_, and Harry shifted a little as he watched Dean get called up to the front.

Then Dean turned into a crow and flew straight at the ceiling.

"You as well?" Moody grumbled, and a few sniggers broke out all around the room. "Fine, fine… you know what it's like, anyway."

Dean shifted back again, and then it was Daphne's turn.

"What did he tell you to do?" Harry asked quietly.

"Jump as high as I could," Dean muttered back. "Birds taking off counts as jumping, right?"

Harry tried not to chuckle too loudly.

* * *

When Ron's turn came around, and he promptly turned into a squirrel, Professor Moody just put a hand over his eyes in a way that Harry recognized – it meant 'why does this keep happening' - and there were more and louder giggles from the students watching.

"Right, that's enough of that," their teacher said. "Are there any _other_ Animagi in this classroom?"

Hermione put up her hand.

"You next, then, Granger," he instructed. "Right… _Imperio._"

Less than a second later, Hermione was a dinosaur, and Moody's jaw dropped.

"I didn't think any witches had even _heard_ of those," he muttered.

As everyone realized that it had happened _again_, Harry couldn't contain his laughter – but his own amusement was drowned out a moment later as Draco literally fell over laughing.

Draco's sudden bout of hysterics almost drew more attention than Hermione's original transformation, and it certainly looked like the Slytherin boy was _trying_ to stop, but every time he got close he just creased up and started laughing again.

It was infectious, enough that Harry himself started laughing as well, and the demonstration was postponed by several minutes until the giggles had finally died away.

* * *

As it happened, Harry was the very last person who was willing to experience the Imperius Curse, and as he made his way to the front he tried to prepare himself for it.

Was this one of those things where you had to concentrate to resist it? Or was it something else where you had to _not_ concentrate – like with quicksand?

"I'd ask if you were ready, Potter, but a dark wizard wouldn't," the Professor said. _"Imperio."_

It was as if Harry was floating. There was a kind of blissful sensation – and then, almost too soon for him to have noticed it, it went away again.

"Does it only feel like that for a moment?" he asked.

"_Imperio,"_ Professor Moody said again, and there was that lovely floating feeling again. But then it stopped, after no more than a couple of seconds, and the Defence Professor shook his head. "Well, Potter, you'll be fine if you just keep blinking. And I wouldn't want to be the dark wizard who actually expected that to _work_ on you."

"That's just _unfair,"_ Draco said quietly.

* * *

They sat down and resumed the lesson after that, and Professor Moody spent a while talking about the complete lists of downsides from the Imperius Curse – as well as the ways it could be resisted.

It seemed that the most important thing was simply to be able to recognize the instructions as coming from somewhere else, and then to focus on how you didn't actually _want_ to do them. The problem with doing that, of course, was that the spell made it so it was terribly hard to actually think about what the instructions _were_.

"That's what makes it such a nasty spell," Moody elaborated. "If you can't fight it, you could be ordered to do just about anything. And part of you would _know_. Yes, part of you would know."

Vincent put his hand up.

"Crabbe," Moody invited.

"Professor, how come you didn't know that those Gryffindors were Animaguses?" Vincent asked, putting his hand down again. "It was in the news and everything."

"I don't trust the news," Professor Moody replied promptly. "Best way to know what's going on is to get the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler, then believe the opposite of anything political in the Prophet, anything about magical creatures in the Quibbler, and anything about celebrities in _either_ of 'em."

He snorted. "But that's got nothing to do with the Imperius Curse. That's just because I'm a paranoid bastard."

A little hush ran around the room, and he started cackling. "You think I don't know that? Of course I'm paranoid! I'm also _alive_."

Harry had to admit that Professor Moody certainly had a point there.

* * *

After the lesson itself, Harry was asked to stay behind.

Professor Moody then pointed out something that Harry actually hadn't realized – that he _could_ have been ordered by the Imperius Curse to simply not blink, which would have meant the spell wouldn't break – and that he'd like to give Harry another go or two in future to see if he could resist the spell anyway.

Harry thought that was probably a good idea, but said that he'd rather do it when at least one of his friends was around. He was expecting Professor Moody to be offended, but instead (and much to his surprise) he got two points for Gryffindor for 'not trusting his Defence teacher'.

Then he was told he was a good lad, and sent down to dinner.

* * *

Harry had often been grateful for his friends, but never had he been more grateful for Hermione in particular than when the true workload of Fourth Year descended on them.

As the second full week of school became the third, Hermione simply organized for herself a complete timetable of when homework and revision should be done and then shared it with all four of them. There was space in it for things like going to Hogsmeade or reading or doing a club, of course, plus for Hermione specifically there were periods for her to get extra sleep or double up on classes (and even in some cases an extra mealtime) but as far as Harry was concerned it was just nice to know he'd be able to do just about all his homework with his friends.

It made it easier to do the work early, while the lesson was still fresher, and to be reminded of anything you personally had forgotten by one of your friends. In turn it meant Harry could remind someone else when _they'd_ missed something, and it seemed as though those were the things that he remembered best of all.

For his part, meanwhile, Dean had started a proper football club by the simple method of going to Professor McGonagall and saying "I'm starting a proper football club", though at his last report he was having a little trouble explaining the offside rule.

He did think there was potential in changing the 'goalkeepers can handball in the penalty area' rule into 'goalkeepers can _use magic_ on the ball in the penalty area, so long as they don't make it into something other than a ball'. Ron thought there was potential for someone to get carried away and send the ball rocketing into the sky fast enough to concuss a dragon.

(Harry wasn't sure if dragons could be concussed, but he didn't especially want to find out.)

* * *

What everyone was really thinking about, though, was the arrival of the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. It kept coming up in conversations in odd moments, such as when Hagrid worried whether his work on Conal's shoes would pass muster for people from France.

Harry actually thought they looked really good. They were made of leather, which made them a lot more like shoes than anything else, and they tied on with laces (which again made them a lot like shoes, or perhaps boots). Conal could take them off himself, quite easily actually, and though Harry had to help explain how you tied up shoelaces because Conal had never done it before – and then recruit help from Anna because _Harry_ didn't put on shoes much either – once the Hufflepuff boy had got the hang of it he was able to just put them on or take them off when needed and everything seemed to be working out fine.

Then there was the conversation with Empress in early October, when Harry had just finished reading the very first time Lessa and Ramoth accidentally jumped backwards in time.

"_I did not expect that to happen,"_ the ancient basilisk said, shifting slightly on her end of the blacked-out mirror. _"And it sounds like she did not expect it either."_

She hissed slightly. _"Is that something that wizards can do? I know they can Apparate, but..."_

"Apparating is just place to place, I think," Harry replied. "If someone was able to go from time to time I think they'd have noticed already. But there are things called Time Turners, which mean you can go back in time a bit."

Empress made a peculiar noise that didn't translate, and Harry frowned. "Are you all right?"

"_I was wondering what Salazar would have done with something like that,"_ she said. _"I think that on thinking about it I am glad he did not have one."_

There was a little pause, and Harry wondered if she was going to say something else.

"_Do you think that the other Triwizard schools will bring any to try and cheat? I would not like to see Hogwarts beaten by someone who was cheating… or at all."_

More than a little startled, Harry asked when she'd heard about the Triwizard tournament, and Empress told him with a sibilant chuckle that he'd mentioned it four times already that month.

* * *

AN:

* * *

I'm not wholly sure that education system is in keeping with the Key Stage 4 guidelines.


	57. But What House Are They

Because everyone was expecting the next big thing to happen to be the arrival of the other schools' students, Harry was quite caught by surprise when the _actual_ next thing to happen arrived at nine in the morning on the Saturday before they were due to arrive.

It was just after breakfast, and Harry was about to head upstairs to clean his teeth before some Charms revision when Hedwig caught up with him.

"Sort of wish Ginny's owl was that well behaved," Fred said, watching as Harry raised a foreleg and Hedwig landed neatly on it.

"Tell me about it," George agreed, rubbing a point just below his collar bone. "Pigwidgeon doesn't consider a letter properly delivered until he's stuffed it up your shirt."

Hedwig looked disapproving even as she gave Harry the message she was carrying, and he unfolded the parchment to find two words hastily written in Hagrid's big hand.

_Hatching now._

"Mind showing me where Hagrid is?" Harry asked his snowy owl, and she clicked her beak before taking off again.

"Excuse me," he added to the Twins, who looked a little disappointed that they weren't able to explain how they'd managed to infiltrate an animated cat toy full of catnip into Taira's schoolbag the previous evening.

Harry had to admit that he wasn't entirely sure if catnip worked on foxes, or kitsune, but it certainly worked on cats and there were several cats in the Slytherin dorm rooms. It was probably quite interesting in there.

* * *

When Harry reached his destination – Hedwig led him to one of the many small wooden buildings that were scattered around the Care of Magical Creatures class area – there were several familiar faces already there.

Hagrid was no surprise, and there was Professor Kettleburn as well – and Nora, leaning over Professor Kettleburn's head anxiously in a way he'd have called hovering was that not a confusing term to apply to a dragon. But Harry hadn't even realized Charlie Weasley was at Hogwarts – unless he hadn't been until a few minutes ago – and there was also an elderly witch he'd never met before with short grey hair, all of them spread fairly evenly around the trio of dragon eggs resting on fine white sand.

The sand itself was also quite different from how Nora herself had been hatched. If Harry remembered correctly, and he was fairly sure he did, Nora had simply been hatched on Hagrid's kitchen table, which still had a few mild scorch marks from having a very hot egg deposited on it once it started to wobble. This seemed much better, with the sand supported about two or three feet off the floor on a metal table, and a quick peek below the table revealed quite a hot fire burning beneath it.

"Ah, Harry!" Professor Kettleburn said brightly. "I don't believe you've met Wilhelmina before? Wilhelmina, this is Harry Potter – Harry, this is Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank."

"Oh, you wrote _The Atlas of Beasts and Creatures,_" Harry realized. "I liked that book, but I did think there were a few things missing."

"There usually are," Mrs. Grubbly-Plank said with a small smile. "Otherwise I wouldn't have much of a job researching them. You may be pleased to know that one of the reasons I'm here is to give the local population of wolves descended from werewolves an interview."

"That would be nice," Harry said.

He was about to add about how he thought they might prefer to be called wargs, but then Hagrid's gasp drew their attention to the eggs.

The first egg was a pale grey, and it cracked twice before finally splitting into a dozen pieces. A shimmering white wing emerged, then a head, and an Antipodean Opaleye sort of stumbled out of the egg and fell right onto the sand.

Professor Kettleburn picked it up, supporting the hatchling at the base of the neck and around the middle of the body, and inspected it quickly and efficiently.

"Male," he said, before passing the dragonet to Hagrid (who got to cleaning off anything that needed to be cleaned away).

"Was I that small?" Nora asked, examining the Opaleye closely as Hagrid worked. "That's very small."

"You were this tiny too!" Hagrid told her, also presumably in Dragonish (or Parsel), and Harry noticed Grubbly-Plank shaking her head.

"Remarkable," she pronounced. "I'd heard about it before, of course I had, but..."

"It's something different to actually see, isn't it?" Kettleburn asked.

The second egg started to crack, but that one went much more slowly. In fact, it went so slowly that the third and last egg – a pleasant silver colour – broke first, and four legs came out the bottom before lifting the dragon inside up.

Since the rest of the shell was still intact, the hatchling wandered around in confusion for a long moment, until Hagrid helped by pulling at the shell so the rest of it split. That revealed a little Swedish Short-Snout, which stretched before flaring both wings and growling in a high pitched way.

"You're not meant to growl at people who are nice," Nora said firmly.

"That one only tiny," Hagrid chuckled.

"You mean that one's only tiny," Nora corrected him matter-of-factly. "One's."

Harry realized it would be polite to translate for Mrs. Grubbly-Plank, who sounded very interested indeed in the explanation of what was being said. At the same time, meanwhile, Professor Kettleburn told them that the blue Short-Snout was female, and then that the Common Welsh Green that hatched out of the final egg was another male.

The process of inspecting them got him bitten (fortunately on his prosthetic hand), and he gave the Swedish Short-Snout that was the culprit a sharp bop on the nose.

"No," he told her clearly. "That's bad manners."

Charlie inspected the new dragons as well, casting several diagnosis spells that Harry sort of thought were the same ones that had been used on him about three years ago, and took plenty of notes.

"What are they going to be called?" he asked.

"Oh, um, right," Hagrid said, presumably switching back from reptilian to English. "Well, didn't really settle on a name for Nora for months, and all, but… what about Oliver, for this little fellow?"

He indicated the Opaleye, then the Welsh Green. "And… well, I wanted to say Will, but that's yer brother's name..."

"Out of curiosity, whose idea was the heated sand?" Grubbly-Plank asked. "It seems like a worthwhile idea."

"I think it was originally Anne McCaffrey's," Charlie answered absently. "If you're not sure about him, what about the Short-Snout?"

"Sarah," Hagrid said firmly. "Sally for short."

* * *

Harry still had school work, which meant he couldn't check in on the young dragons very often during the day, but he did briefly contact Empress each night before she got to work.

It seemed she was going to be doing the same program of education for the three young dragons – now in their own joint room in the castle, to keep them used to one another as well as incidentally keep them somewhere that Empress could talk to them – as she had for Nora herself, though getting started when they were younger as she didn't have to wait until she'd thought of it.

Harry certainly couldn't tell yet whether the hatchlings were acting differently to how Nora had when she was that age – or whether they were taking to the program to keep them well behaved to the same degree that Nora had – but he could tell that there'd been a major effect on Nora, who seemed to spend half her time trying to keep an eye on her juniors and trying to stop them getting in trouble.

It was particularly obvious during Care of Magical Creatures, when the whole class had to stop discussing Nifflers for ten minutes as both Nora and Hagrid tried to find a remarkably well disguised Welsh Green, who clearly hadn't yet learned either that his name was Gary (well, officially Gareth) or the Parsel equivalent thereof.

Harry tried not to think about what Sally and Ollie were doing during that time, though if he had to guess it would probably be 'try to set fire to things'.

They wouldn't have fire breath for weeks or months, but they would find a way.

* * *

That Friday, the last one before the Monday on which Halloween fell, classes ended a bit early so the whole school could be ready for when the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students arrived.

They all had to line up in their houses and years, forming seven rows spaced out by height on one of the swells of ground coming down from the main doors, and after there had been a few allowances for height everyone just sort of stood and waited.

"I wonder how they're going to arrive," Ron said quietly. "I know flying carpets aren't illegal in some countries. Maybe it'll be one of them?"

"Portkeys are easier, right?" Dean asked. "Unless you're a dragon."

"So not if they're from Beauxbatons, then," Harry contributed. "I think if it were me I'd have to fly and floo fram fronce. Bleah."

Hermione tried not to giggle.

"I mean, I'd have to fly and floo _from France,_" Harry tried again, sounding it out slower and more carefully this time. "But to actually get to Hogwarts we use a train… maybe they do something else."

"It's France," Neville pointed out. "And according to Ron's brothers, France is backwards."

He shrugged. "I always thought that would make them Ecnarf, but that's just me. So maybe they'd see a train as a novelty."

"They have some of the fastest trains in the world in France," Hermione said. "They call it the TGV, which stands for very fast train."

"I'm not sure that's how spelling works?" Ron asked, then shivered. "I'm kind of cold… _Hyacinthum flammare."_

"Mr. Weasley," Professor McGonagall said sharply. "Please do not ignite yourself in front of anyone from Beauxbatons or Durmstrang, it would be very impolite."

"It's cold, though," Ron complained. "And it's easier to cast than a warming charm."

"I believe Mr. Weasley may have had a most excellent idea," Professor Dumbledore said. "Though I must say the colour of the flames would better suit Ravenclaw. If anyone who can cast that particular spell to such a degree that they can provide their house colour would please raise their wands?"

* * *

Five minutes later, surrounded by warm red-and-gold flames that gave a toasty feeling to the night air, Harry wondered what Muggles would think of this.

Still, nobody was shivering any more.

"Look!" someone said, pointing over towards the Forbidden Forest, and Harry focused in that direction – quickly spotting what they were pointing at.

It was a big black shape, zooming closer, and there was a sudden clap of wings as Nora took off from her position right at the back of the waiting group.

"They're friends!" Hagrid called up to her.

"Okay!" Nora replied back, just as loudly, and sped out to meet the incoming shape. It quickly resolved itself into being a giant house-sized carriage drawn by a dozen enormous winged horses, and Nora caught up with it before flying alongside it during the approach.

Her long scarf streamed out behind her, and as it got lower and lower she slowed down until it finally touched the ground. Then she rose back into the air, alighting next to Hagrid with a thump, and the doors of the carriage opened.

A boy in pale robes jumped down, took one look at the Hogwarts students, and nearly fell over.

"Emile?" asked someone inside the carriage, and the boy quickly did something to lower a set of golden steps.

Then the Beauxbatons delegation disembarked.

They were led by someone about the same size as Hagrid, which was interesting, and for some reason they all just got off the carriage and stared at all the Hogwarts students.

Dumbledore strolled happily up to them, purple flames dripping off the end of his beard, and clapped several times.

"A wonderful entrance, Madame Maxime," he said. "Welcome to Hogwarts."

"Dumbledore," Madame Maxime replied, in – naturally – a French accent. "Your students appear to be aflame."

"It can be a little cold in Scotland at this time of year," Dumbledore replied with a smile. "As I'm sure you must be aware. Would you perhaps like to step inside to warm up? I am afraid Karkaroff has not yet arrived, so the choice of whether to wait for him or go inside is yours."

"I think, yes, perhaps warming up would be for the best," Madame Maxime said. "But I must ask – was that a dragon I saw?"

"Our school mascot, Nora," Dumbledore replied, and Nora waved helpfully at the sound of her name. "She's quite the kindly individual."

"_C'est un loup,"_ one of the Beauxbatonniers said, blinking. _"Pourquoi."_

"_Et je pense que c'est un sphinx,"_ another replied. _"Pareil__.__"_

* * *

The giant flying horses that had pulled the Beauxbatons carriage were passed off to Hagrid, who led them down the path, and then the Beauxbatons students went indoors while everyone else stayed outside waiting for the Durmstrangers.

Everyone was looking at the sky, now, expecting Durmstrang to come flying in as well, though Harry had to wonder about how Beauxbatons had arrived and whether it would work for Durmstrang as well.

Maybe the Beauxbatons carriage was just enchanted the same way as, well, _Harry_ – or the Hogwarts Express – so that none of the Muggles they flew over could actually see it. That seemed like the only way to get a house-sized carriage pulled by a dozen elephantine horses over Britain without being noticed.

Then Lee Jordan noticed something was happening with the lake, and an eighteenth-century sort of ship appeared out of a whirlpool before starting to let off passengers.

"Ah, Durmstrang approaches," Dumbledore observed pleasantly, as a collection of cloaked students came up the lawns to the castle.

The headmaster of Durmstrang, Professor Karkaroff, promptly greeted Dumbledore before shaking his hand, and examined the gathered Hogwarts students.

"It seems your old Salazar Slytherin was right," he said. "The policy on Muggleborn students _did_ lead to witch burnings."

Harry didn't know whether to gasp or laugh, and ultimately settled on laugh – as did most of the rest of the students. Flopsy and Cottontail both spluttered as they tried not to giggle too much, and something about the noise seemed to draw the Durmstrangers to really _look_ at the Hogwarts students for the first time.

"Wow..." someone said, in a thick Bulgarian accent. "They have a cerberus student."

"_And _a wolf. That's really cool. Why didn't we think of that?" someone else asked.

"Hush," someone else chided. "You'll make us look bad."

Thinking about whether anyone else could have heard what they'd said, Harry decided the tactful thing to do would be not to mention it to anyone.

Then Ron noticed that one of the Durmstrang students was Viktor Krum, which he was very excited about indeed.

* * *

Inside (and after the Hogwarts students had been extinguished) they found the tables all set for a feast, which was a bit unusual for Friday, and the Beauxbatons students were mostly all seated together at the Ravenclaw table. The Durmstrang visitors ended up a little bit more spread out, though Viktor Krum didn't go to the Gryffindor table – which was a little disappointing for Ron – and the headmasters took their places up at the high table.

"Good evening," Dumbledore said with a pleasant smile. "Welcome, one and all, to the Great Hall at Hogwarts! I know many of you will have seen it before, but please join me in saying hello to all our guests."

He waited a few seconds for the generalized murmur of hello-welcome to die down. "We are of course here for the Tournament, which will be officially opened once everyone has filled themselves nicely up with food. So, without further ado, the feast!"

The plates filled with food in a flash, and Harry examined the closest food to him.

It looked like a sort of shellfish stew, and he took a ladleful for his plate before picking up one of the shellfish in two talons.

It looked sort of like a mussel, and he crunched it up before swallowing.

"How is it?" Ron asked.

"Crunchy," Harry summarized.

"I think he means apart from the bit he can't possibly eat," Ginny pointed out.

That made sense, and Harry considered before answering a second time.

"Sort of spicy," he said, licking his teeth a bit. "I think you get an idea of most of the taste from the sauce, so take a spoonful if you want."

After duly taking a spoonful, Ron decided that it wasn't really _for_ him. The pilaf was more to his taste, though, and an odd-looking filled pastry was something he liked so much he said he wasn't sure whether to tell everyone else to have some or just try and have it all himself.

Someone from Beauxbatons came over to pick up the shellfish stew – apparently it was French – and after that Harry noticed that two new people had entered the hall.

One of them was Mr. Ludo Bagman, the head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, but much to Harry's surprise the other was Percy Weasley.

"Wonder why he's here?" he asked, nodding. Everyone looked to see what he meant, and Fred groaned quietly.

"And I thought we'd escaped," he said with a sigh.

"That's how Issolas work," Harry replied. "Any idea why though?"

"It could be because the Department of International Magical Co-Operation is a bit of a mess," Neville suggested. "The trials and stuff are over, but they're still trying to work out who's responsible for what or even who's going to be in charge."

"Percy _was_ involved in organizing it," George mused. "So that might explain it."

"How come it's such a mess?" Dean asked. "There was only one bloke who got arrested, right?"

"Well, he _was_ the head of the department," Hermione said. "And he was the sort of department head who keeps his own son under Imperius for more than a decade. That sort of person sounds like a control freak – I wouldn't be surprised if he's the only one who knows what everyone's doing, and would you trust him?"

"Probably not, yeah," Dean agreed.

"To be honest," Ginny began, with a tone of deep contemplation. "Out of all of us Weasleys, Percy is the only one I'd trust in a DIMC position without starting a war."

"You what?" Ron demanded. "You think I'd start a war?"

"I think _I'd_ start a war," Ginny explained. "I think you, me and Mum would all get so angry we'd start a war, Charlie and Dad would get distracted and start a war, and Bill would start a war after taking something home from Egypt he shouldn't."

"And what about us?" George asked. "Shouldn't George and I get a mention?"

"You two would start a war for a laugh," Ginny judged.

"She's got us there, Fred," Fred said. "Can you imagine the kinds of pranks you could play with the right sort of war?"

"I've never liked quiche," George told him. "Could we declare war on that?"

"We could make Harry the leader of the army," Fred pointed out. "He can eat anything. Even _quiche_."

* * *

Dessert had just as much of a mix of food as the main meal had – Harry was particularly confused by something Hermione said was called Crepes Marcie, which for no adequately explained reason had been served with about a pound of cinnamon showered on top of the basic recipe – and after that Professor Dumbledore stood up again.

"I hope you've all stuffed yourselves adequately," he said. "I am led to believe that there will in fact be no more food for as much as ten hours, and I would not want everyone to starve."

Harry saw some of the Beauxbatons students looking around in confusion as Dumbledore continued, expressing how glad he was of the fulfilment of the true purpose of the Triwizard Tournament (which was, from context, exposing people to foreign cooking) and then launched into a clarification of the set up for the Triwizard Tournament.

It seemed that there would be a five-person panel involved in the judging, consisting of the three headmasters, plus Mr. Bagman and 'whoever the Department of International Magical Cooperation decides to send us', which this time at least was Percy Weasley.

Mr. Filch the caretaker then brought in a jewelled wooden chest, the sort of thing which made Harry's claws tingle faintly, and he sternly told himself that it would probably ruin the entire Tournament and make a lot of people very upset if he took the shiny chest for himself.

He had a hoard. He didn't need a bigger one. (Though admittedly most dragons would never say that a hoard was too big, they also often decided it was big enough and stopped going out for more.)

With great ceremony, Dumbledore opened the lid of the casket and took out a small wooden goblet – one full to the brim with blue flames, which probably would have looked a bit more impressive had everyone not been on fire earlier.

"The Goblet of Fire," he announced. "The origin of the name is obvious. The Goblet itself will be our impartial judge to select which student from each of the three schools taking part in the Tournament will be taking part. Each student who wishes to participate – and is at least seventeen, of course – will have to write their name and school clearly upon a piece of parchment and place it within the flames of the Goblet, and we shall reconvene to see who it selects in two days."

Dumbledore gave a little smile.

"When we were planning this part of the Tournament, there was something of a conflict with the calendar," he announced. "It would have been tremendously meaningful for you all to have twenty-four hours to place your names within the Goblet of Fire and to then have the selection made on the night of Halloween, but alas, the week did not co-operate. So we will be giving you more than thirty-six hours – the goblet will be in the entrance hall tomorrow morning – and holding the Selection Feast a day before Halloween."

Dumbledore's voice turned rather graver. "I wish to impress upon you all that the tasks of the Triwizard Tournament are not for the faint hearted, and that once embarked upon the path of a school champion cannot be left before the end of the tournament. If one places his or her name into the goblet, one has entered into a binding magical contract which is in force until the end of the Third Task. This is simply one of the reasons why we have restricted the age of entry to the tournament this year, and indeed the Goblet of Fire will be surrounded by an Age Line when it is placed in the Entrance Hall so as to avoid temptation. Suffice it to say that that is but one of the measures taken to ensure that the champions are restricted to those who are of an age to compete."

"Well, that won't slow us down for long," George said quietly.

"Now, I believe it is time for bed," Dumbledore added. "Good night to you all."

* * *

"Okay, so what can we do to get past the Age Line?" Fred asked, on their way to the dorms. "Ageing potion?"

"Dumbledore drew that line," Hermione retorted. "I think he's heard of ageing potions."

"Yeah, well, worth a try," George declared.

"It's dangerous, anyway," Hermione added. "I don't think anyone below seventeen will stand a chance, we haven't learned enough."

"Hermione," Lee Jordan said, indicating himself and then Fred and George. _"We'll_ turn seventeen over the course of the tournament. We've done our OWLs. The only difference between how much magical education we've had and how much, um, Pucey or Warrington has had is nothing."

"They haven't even done more homework than us," Fred jumped in. "We _counted_."

"I don't like supporting my brothers when they're planning something insane," Ron said critically. "But they have a point."

"You don't like supporting us when we're planning something insane?" Fred demanded.

"That does explain why he never supports us," George mused. "Explains a lot, really."

"So, ideas," Lee added. "Dean? Anything?"

"I've got loads of ideas," Dean replied, grinning. "Problem is, Dumbledore asked first."

"...that sneaky old extremely distinguished and somewhat mad wizard," George growled. "Like what?"

"You can't have an older student pick up the goblet and move it outside the age line," Dean said, beginning to tick them off. "The name on the parchment that goes into the goblet has to match your name – I think he got help from Professor Lupin and Mr. Black for that. The parchment has to be in your hands until you drop it in the flames, so you can't throw it in from outside. There's only three schools, so you can't make up a new one..."

He trailed off, seeing everyone staring at him (including several passing Hufflepuffs). "What?"

"How long have you been thinking about this?" Neville asked.

"About a month," Dean answered with a shrug. "Professor Dumbledore asked me to think of all the ways to get around it, and I came up with a lot of them."

"That's okay, we'll just use our Animagus forms," Fred suggested.

"You think he didn't think of _that?_" Dean asked, sniggering. "Good luck, I kind of want to see a pine marten with a giant white beard."

"What about if the one who puts it in is _really_ magic resistant?" Fred asked. "Like Harry?"

"I'd say no," Harry answered, quite reasonably he thought. "And it wouldn't work anyway because it'd be someone else's name. I think if you want to enter the tournament you should get Professor Dumbledore to change the age limit so it's sixteen years and three months old, because that way anyone in Sixth Year qualifies."

"We really should have thought of that two months ago," George groaned. "Well, we'll give it a try anyway, no point _not_ trying."

* * *

"Can we see any more of those big catapults?" Neville asked. "Ones that we haven't set on fire, I mean."

"There's one over on the western tower," Harry replied, indicating it on the map. "But apart from that you don't see any."

"Okay, that's good," James decided. "I think that means we can land to the east – over here – without getting the ship smashed up. Good work, guys."

"I hope you're not going to dangle Toskr over the side on a rope again," Ron said. "That was really kind of embarrassing."

"It was funny, though," Su pointed out. "You've got to admit that."

"It kind of was," Ron said, after some agonizing.

"Are we going to land over there, or are we going to have someone fly the boat over the battlements and drop off most of the team?" Tanisis asked. "James, your character knows how to land, right?"

"Well, yeah, but not very well," James countered. "It's based on Dexterity, and mine isn't great."

"I think we need to think about this a bit," Su said. "Do we have the time?"

"I'll tell you if anything changes," Harry said. "For now the castle guards are sort of running around watching you."

"I hope they don't work out why we're here," Colin said. "We're supposed to be saving that guy, right? And they might kill him if they realize."

"That probably won't happen until they think we're going to win," Tanisis said. "So we just need to move quickly… _or_ we could try and get someone in to guard him while the rest of us rescue him."

"Yeah, but Harry said the windows of the tower he's in are really small," Ron pointed out.

He paused. "Why is everyone looking at me?"

"You've got to admit, this sort of thing _does_ tend to solve most of our problems," Su said, trying not to laugh. "Who's the best at throwing? And do we have a good parachute for a squirrel?"

"None of you have a weapon proficiency in squirrel," Harry said, as Ron began to try to protest through his giggles. "But there is a Feather Fall spell, so if you aim right Ron can stop himself falling."

"Oh, right, he knows the arrest momentum spell," James nodded. "Should we just drop him? Or swing him on a rope?"

"You sound like my brothers two hours ago," Ron said, still grinning. "Anyway, uh, Toskr makes this kind of squeaky sigh and tells everyone to just get on with it then."

* * *

As far as Harry could tell, neither Fred nor George nor anyone else made any real progress in trying to get their names in the Goblet illicitly.

That didn't mean they didn't try. Harry wasn't there to see it, but apparently there'd been some kind of mad series of events where first Lee Jordan tried transfiguring a marble into a lion to bring the Goblet to the _edge_ of the Age Line and let them put in their entry parchment that way.

Lee Jordan now had a near-weightless floating marble lion persistently bouncing off the side of his head, and Dumbledore had stopped by to pleasantly inform him that it would wear off in a day or two.

Undaunted by the failure of their friend, Fred and George had tried plans of their own. Throwing the parchment hadn't worked (it had just caught fire) and then making a very _long_ piece of parchment had led to the parchment curling back and hitting Fred quite sharply on the nose.

George had tried the next thing, which was taking Animagus form and then taking Ageing Potion, and Fred had Transfigured one of the flagstones on the floor so the two of them could get underneath the age line. That had actually seemed to work, apparently, right up until Fred had tried to put his parchment into the Goblet and both of them had been flung backwards with great force to land just outside the front door.

Both of them had also apparently ended up with six foot long beards (which Harry could only imagine had been particularly hard on George, if he'd still been transformed at the time) and were in the Hospital Wing awaiting beard removal.

Ginny said that they'd been slightly cheered up by the two grumpy-looking fox kits in a basket next to them, because the Smiths hadn't been successful either and the Age Line had gone the other way in making a point with them.

* * *

To Harry's mind, though, the oddest thing about the two days between the arrival of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students and the official opening of the Triwizard Tournament was meeting people from other wizarding schools in the first place.

It seemed like some of the Durmstrang students weren't quite sure what to make of the student body at Hogwarts. At first Harry thought it was something to do with all the non-human students who'd joined in the last few years, because he knew that some wizards didn't really know what to make of centaurs (and sphinxes were classified as dangerous beasts) but something June said in the oddly-shaped club meeting had sort of explained things for him when she said that one of the Durmstrangers had asked whether she was Muggle Born.

(She'd said that her parents were both wargs, and that you had to go back quite a long way to find a non magical wolf – you _would_ find German wargs a couple of generations back, though – and the Durmstrang girl had seemed slightly disquieted by the whole idea.)

As for Beauxbatons, Harry happened to run into one of the French students in the library where he was looking for a book about the history of Hogwarts. Harry was happy to point him at _Hogwarts: A History_, and once he'd got the book the boy (who was called Emile) had asked Harry somewhat hesitantly just how _long_ Hogwarts had had non human students.

"Oh, well, I'm in fourth year," Harry answered. "But my friend Hagrid was at school in the 1940s. So it depends how you count."

"Hagrid, the grounds man?" Emile said. "I see… is there anyone else?"

"Well, werewolves don't really count," Harry frowned. "As they're only non human a few hours a month. So I think it's quite new – there was a legal case about me which sort of got things started."

"We were all ready to feel very smug," Emile told him candidly. "We have Veela at our school, and there is Madame Maxime of course, and we've always thought Hogwarts was silly and backwards. Now I think that we have been silly and backwards ourselves for not paying attention."

Harry shrugged his wings, careful not to bump into anything. "I think that's what this is all about, really. That and being able to be smug if you win."

"Of course, and when Beauxbatons wins we will be able to be smug again," Emile nodded.

Harry snickered, then remembered something. "Oh, um, do you have any dragons hiding at your school?"

"Dragons?" Emile asked. "Like your mascot, ah, Nora?"

"Or like me," Harry clarified.

"I've never seen any," Emile answered.

It wasn't until fifteen minutes later that Harry realized that didn't really answer his question satisfactorily.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Whoops still near the end of October.

I did actually ask someone I know what the closest thing in French is to "Wat."


	58. Try Wizards

Harry spent a good deal of Sunday afternoon in Fort William, partly because he discovered a book called The Chrome Circle that was a sequel to one he'd read before.

It was actually sort of a funny kind of sequel, because it was the fourth book in the series but it was a very direct sequel to the second book. It also had a character who seemed to be part-dragon and part-kitsune, but who seemed to mostly look all-kitsune, and that sort of made sense in some ways when you remembered that magic was involved (and after all wasn't a kitsune sort of a magical mix of human and fox traits?).

He hadn't finished by the time he had to head back to Hogwarts, but that was okay. It would just go to the top of his to-read pile.

Then when he got back it was for a little bit of homework – this time it was writing about what you needed to remember to safely keep a Niffler, and as far as Harry was concerned it could have just been 'don't have shiny objects in your hoard' and that would be a good start – and talking to Remus.

Apparently he was "on the mend", which was one of those phrases which sounded reassuring. They spent a lot of time talking about the situation with the rest of Remus' unexpectedly acquired new family, as well, and Remus said that it wasn't easier or harder to manage teaching them all what they needed to know (which was mostly 'magic') but just… different.

Harry sort of knew what he meant. It was just odd to contemplate what it would be like teaching an adult to read – even though that was probably something he'd need to do for Empress at some point, since even if she could read it was probably Latin, Greek and the funny English with the long 'f's – and for a wizard learning basic magic was the same thing.

Remus also said that they hadn't yet been able to tell for sure whether any of the Muggle werewolves were still Muggles while they were transformed. That would be very hard to find out, but… well, there was the time.

It sounded to Harry like Remus was doing a tremendous amount of work for someone who was injured, and he said so.

* * *

"You know what I'm not looking forward to?" Neville asked, some way into the Feast that evening.

"Old age?" Dean suggested.

"No – what?" Neville blinked. "Why old age?"

"Well, are you looking forward to it?" Dean said, and Neville had to admit he wasn't. "There you go."

Everyone sort of sat in silence for a bit, until Hermione cleared her throat. "No, Neville, what?"

"Tomorrow's feast," Neville said, cutting a slice of pie. "There's only so many feasts you can have before you sort of start to feel stuffed."

"Call yourself a teenager?" Ron asked. "Besides, if you do feel too full, just do some more exercise. I know that's my plan."

"We'd love to have you as a goalie for a football match, mate," Dean suggested. "It's sort of something we already know you're good at."

Harry chuckled, then took his own bite of pie. "Maybe tomorrow they'll do American food or something."

"What counts as American food?" Ron mused. "Those hamburger things?"

"I think they have their own type of pizza, as well," Harry said. "And hot dogs."

He looked up at the high table, where the Goblet of Fire sat in front of Dumbledore. "I wonder who's going to get chosen."

"Maybe it'll be Angelina," Hermione suggested. "She said she'd enter. Or it could be one of the Slytherins."

There was a loud _brrrrring_ noise from up at the high table, and everyone looked up from their meals.

Dumbledore was fiddling with an old-style alarm clock, the type with the two bells, and in the near silence he twisted the key through three full turns.

He put it down on the table, then smiled pleasantly. "Just making sure that we will not miss when the Goblet is ready," he said. "And on that note, I believe it is time for dessert. Please try to take no more than half an hour, for I would not like for anyone to miss out on the last of their trifle if they happen to be our Champion."

* * *

Pudding flew by, though fortunately only metaphorically.

Harry took Professor Dumbledore's warning to heart, and did his best to make sure he wasn't starting anything that looked like it would take too long to eat. That still meant there was a lot of choice, and he felt quite pleased with how much he'd enjoyed the feast (was it the Triwizard Feast?) when Dumbledore finally stood.

"I would tell you all that I estimate the Goblet of Fire will require about seventy-three seconds," he began. "But by the time I had finished giving that estimate it will be less. Now, when a Champion has been happily selected, I would like them to come up to the top of the hall, starting here, and then walk along the length of the staff table before going through into the chamber behind my chair. It is there that they will be receiving their first instructions."

He smiled pleasantly. "After which point, with those formalities taken care of, we will get to the _other_ formalities. I believe that Professor Flitwick has a piece prepared for our choir to sing, though he has told me he was singularly unable to find one which fit the occasion, and there will generally be all the things which people like to do to show off at events such as these."

Picking up the alarm clock, Dumbledore nodded gravely. Then he flourished his wand, and at once all the candles were extinguished; the only light was from the Goblet of Fire, which burned brightly enough to illuminate the whole hall with blue-white light.

"I wonder if it would have been Percy if this happened last year," Ron said, quietly.

* * *

After several long seconds, there was a sudden gout of dark red flame from the Goblet. Hundreds of sparks fizzed into the air, briefly forming a smoky rooster-tail lit from within, then they dissipated and Dumbledore's hand darted out to catch something.

It was a piece of parchment.

"The champion for Beauxbatons," he announced, "will be Fleur Delacour!"

One of the French students stood up, and about a third of the Great Hall started applauding straight away. Then it spread quickly, just about everyone clapping within a few seconds, and Harry watched along with everyone else as she walked along the length of the High Table.

Her hair was sort of silvery-blonde, the same colour as Draco Malfoy's hair, and Harry wondered if that meant they were related somehow. It made a bit of sense, if you thought Malfoy sounded like a French name, but then again it wasn't as if anyone who had the same hair colour had to be related so it was probably just a coincidence.

"Now _she_ is a quiche," Fred said, in tones of grudging approval.

"You what?" Ron asked, startled enough to look at his brother instead of at Fleur.

Hermione sighed loudly. "Seriously?"

"What does he mean?" Ginny asked. "I must have missed this… does that mean you want Harry to eat her or something?"

"What?" Fred asked. "No, I just mean-"

"After he said he didn't like quiche, I asked him if he knew what it was," Hermione said, sounding like she was barely restraining herself from having a good tut. "And he didn't."

"Be fair," George said. "I knew it was French. I mean, Fred knew it was French."

"I told him it was a kind of savoury French tart," Hermione continued, then stopped and slowly shook her head as just about all of them tried not to giggle.

Then the Goblet of Fire sent out another plume of red smoke and flame, and Dumbledore caught the second parchment.

"Ah!" he said. "It seems the champion for Hogwarts will be Cedric Diggory!"

Harry was pretty much okay with that one, though not as okay as Hufflepuff in particular (who'd exploded into cheering and kept going for several minutes – there was even a long howl from June, abruptly cut off as she realized it was a bit impolite). He liked Cedric, who seemed to be dutiful as a Prefect and pleasant enough as a person, and while he'd _probably_ have preferred a Gryffindor Champion he didn't really mind someone from any of the four Houses.

"Well, at least we know one thing," Neville said. "It's pretty clear _he_ did more homework in his OWLs than Fred, George and Lee."

"Good point," Lee admitted. "You've got us there."

"Has he?" George asked. "I don't remember being got."

"Seemed pretty clear to me," Lee shrugged. "Sometimes you just have to admit this sort of thing."

"Speak for yourself," Fred muttered.

Then there was a third burst of flame, and Dumbledore missed the third parchment. It started to fall, then flew back into his hand, and he wiggled the fingers of his free hand with a twinkle-eyed smile before unrolling the parchment and reading it.

"And the champion for Durmstrang is Viktor Krum!" he said.

"What do you want to bet that nobody else even bothered to enter from Durmstrang?" Lee asked.

"I think _some_ of them did," Ginny frowned, but she didn't sound convinced.

"Well, if he's good at… whatever the Triwizard Tournament expects, _and_ he's good at Quidditch, what isn't he good at?" Neville said.

"Blending in?" Harry suggested. "It's kind of annoying when you can't blend in, take it from me."

"Mate, literally _nobody_ in the Muggle world thinks there's anything unusual about you even when they see you," Dean told him. "You of all people can't complain about not fitting in, given you're the only wizard who can fly in public and nobody bats an eye."

"...I was mostly thinking of when I first came to Hogwarts, and Diagon Alley, and stuff," Harry defended himself. "But yeah, you've got a good point."

"And now that we have all our Champions chosen and our schools satisfied," Dumbledore said, as Krum disappeared through the door, "I fear I must now ask you all to wait a little while we tell them what will be happening. But I can assure you all that you will be able to contribute in a very real way to the Tournament, by cheering on your school's champion."

He winked. "Though I would please ask you to only do so during the actual tasks, as I fear random bouts of cheering amidst the normal lessons are a little distracting."

Then there was another plume of red flame, and sparks cascaded out of the Goblet again. A _fourth_ piece of parchment came flying out, and Dumbledore caught it just after it reached the apex.

In total silence, he unfolded it.

Then, to Harry's surprise, he began to smile.

"It seems that we have a fourth champion," he said. "The champion is 'I had to see if I could do it', and it seems they are the champion of school 'Your move, headmaster'. Alas, the note is typewritten."

Professor Moody cackled up at the staff table.

"I take it this was your doing, Alastor?" Dumbledore added, turning towards the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"Yep," Moody agreed. "You did a pretty good job, but I'll show you how I got round it later."

"Bugger," Dean said quietly, as everyone began talking about what had just happened.

"Dean, language!" Hermione chided.

"It's those books Harry and you keep handing around, _they_ have this kind of stuff in them," Dean replied. "Still, I was really hoping I'd thought of everything."

"Professor Moody's been trying to think of everything for ages as well," Harry said. "I suppose it's not very surprising that he's good at thinking of things as well."

Professor Dumbledore, the other head teachers, and both Percy and Mr. Bagman had vanished to brief the Champions, and Professor Flitwick stepped up to the front of the dais.

"While we wait, how about a bit of music?" he asked. "If the choir could assemble?"

June was one of the first out of her seat, partly because when she sat down again after the spontaneous Hufflepuff celebration she'd put her forelimbs on the bench and her hind limbs on the stone of the floor. Harry realized she must have been preparing for precisely this moment, and watched as she and the other choristors took their places.

"I must confess we were quite unable to find something appropriate," Flitwick admitted. "But instead I think we'll give our visitors a bit of local colour. If you could start us off, Joseph?"

A Seventh-Year boy took a breath, held it while Flitwick waved his wand as a baton, then he – and the choir – launched into the Skye boat song, the one which went _'Over the Sea to Skye'._

* * *

The next morning, at breakfast, Harry remembered that one of the things Professor Dumbledore had said about the Tournament was that anyone taking part wouldn't have to do their end of year exams.

That sort of made sense if they were going to have to spend time on how to do the Tasks instead of revise, but it sort of _didn't_ make sense for the people who were going to not win the tournament. Obviously saying 'I won the Triwizard tournament' would work pretty well as a way of showing how good you were at magic, but saying you _didn't_ win might not work so well.

And weren't there NEWTs in Seventh Year? Cedric didn't have to worry about that because he was in Sixth Year, but Harry was fairly sure that NEWTs were actually quite important (like OWLs.)

"I wonder what the first task is going to be," Ron said, sitting down next to him. "Any idea?"

Harry shrugged, not really wanting that conversation to go any further.

"Maybe it'll be that you have to do something nearly impossibly hard," Ron added. "You know, like prepare some Pox Prevention Philter while Professor Snape's watching."

"Or finding the right book in the library without Madam Pince noticing," Neville contributed, then blinked. "Actually, come to think of it, when does Madam Pince eat? I've never seen her in the Great Hall."

"Maybe she eats in the library," Dean suggested. Immediately after that, though, he shook his head. "No, you're not allowed to eat in the library."

"Beats me," Ron shrugged, finishing the process of buttering his bread, and put a big piece of smoked ham on the lower piece followed by plenty of cheese. "We've got Herbology first, right?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Harry agreed. "Then I've got Creatures, so you must have Muggle Studies."

"And the afternoon off for me," Ron finished, pressing down firmly on his sandwich and pointing his wand at it. _"Hyacinthum flammare._ Maybe I'll try and work out what I want my Runes project to be."

"Any ideas?" Neville asked, interested.

"Well, I did have this idea about making rockets and stuff loads more efficient," Ron replied. "You know, so they can go higher with the same fuel. I think it'd be pretty good to have some kind of runic nozzle, maybe?"

He shrugged. "I do kind of need to know more about rockets for that, though. Proper rockets, I mean."

"I'll see if I can find something next week," Harry suggested. "I could have a look in the used book shop as well, that's usually got all sorts of stuff in it."

"Thanks," Ron said.

He was about to say something else, but one of the visiting Durmstrang students had just come over to their table.

"Is… that food on fire?" he asked, pointing.

"Not really," Ron said.

The Durmstrang boy looked at the sandwich, still merrily burning away, then back at Ron.

"Not really?" he asked.

"Nah, it's not _really_ fire," Ron explained. "It's sort of a cheap version. _Finite."_

The flames vanished, and he took a bite.

"Ah, great," he said. "I got it just right that time."

"Maybe you should start timing it with a watch," Dean mused.

"Nah, I can't make the flames the same temperature every time," Ron dismissed.

Harry got the sense that the Durmstrang student didn't quite know what to make of Ron's cooking. It was a pretty simple idea once you got used to it, though.

* * *

Half of what everyone talked about in the lessons was the Triwizard Tournament. Herbology with the Hufflepuffs had all the Hufflepuffs talking about how proud they were of Cedric (and Harry found it hard to begrudge them, because he was sure he'd have felt the same about a Gryffindor champion) and in Care of Magical Creatures Professor Kettleburn took the time to tell them all about how some of the most dangerous events in Tournaments past had involved magical creatures such as the Cockatrice.

Harry promptly got out his copy of _Fantastic Beasts_, flipped through to the section on cockatrices, and found – as he'd sort of remembered – that there wasn't one.

"Professor?" he asked. "Are cockatrices Beings as well, like three-headed dogs are? They're not in _Fantastic Beasts_."

"And what house are they going to be in?" Seamus Finnegan added quietly.

"An excellent question!" Professor Kettleburn said brightly, then his whole demeanour changed. "And alas, the answer is no. They are not in _Fantastic Beasts_ not because they are not Beasts but because there are none left at all; the last is believed to have died in 1933. A sad day, a sad day."

"Are there others like that?" one of the Ravenclaws asked.

"A few," Kettleburn agreed. "I must admit I am particularly sad to have never seen a Roc, as they were truly glorious birds by all accounts – but alas they were all gone more than a hundred years before the Statute of Secrecy. A shame, as the wizard Clemenes once wrote that he saw one with a wingspan of nearly a full mile."

The number took Harry's breath away. Oh, there were really big dragons in books like the Silmarillion, much bigger than that – but this was something that had actually existed, and that people had seen.

There were some really amazing things in the world now, things there hadn't been in the past, but sometimes you sort of wished that all the amazing things from the _past_ could still be around as well.

Even if they would have been very hard indeed to hide.

* * *

Arithmancy wasn't immune from Tournament-related lesson plans either. Professor Vector drew up a chart on the board, showing them all who had won each of the last forty tournaments before the eventual cancellation of the Triwizard, and then begun asking what they thought might be helpful in working out who was going to win.

Hermione was the first, and suggested exam marks. That got her two points for being so prompt, and Professor Vector used a touch of magic to rearrange things and show them all the average test scores of the champions who'd come first, second and third.

Terry Boot added age to the list, which shuffled things again, and then Harry asked a bit awkwardly if gender was _not_ one.

"Correct, Mr. Potter," Professor Vector said. "As it happens, that has nothing to do with it. Is there another you can think of, instead?"

"House?" Harry asked. "Or would that mean there weren't enough?"

"No, House is a fine suggestion," Professor Vector told him. "The only problem is that Beauxbatons does not have Houses, but we can still look at the Hogwarts students by that measure."

Colours appeared on the board to show all the Hogwarts champions.

"Work out if the House is significant," they were told, and Harry started counting up the total number of Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs and Slytherins in each category.

* * *

"So does Durmstrang have Houses?" Neville asked, during the Halloween Feast.

"Pardon?" Dean said. "Um… doesn't look like it? Their uniforms are all the same."

"Professor Vector said that Beauxbatons didn't have houses," Neville explained. "It was in Arithmancy. So I was wondering if that meant that there were no houses at Durmstrang."

Harry cut a slice of pie, and discovered to his surprise that the pie was actually full of goats' cheese pasta. After a moment he shrugged, took the slice, and started eating.

"Hermione will know, won't she?" Ron asked. "Hermione, does Durmstrang have Houses?"

"That depends if they've changed it in the last few years," Hermione replied, most of her attention on carefully folding up a slice of pizza.

"Well, yeah, obviously," Dean said. "If we decided to get rid of Houses then we wouldn't have them, why do you mention it?"

"I actually think I heard about this once," George frowned. "It was in OWL History of Magic? Unless I'm remembering wrong."

"You actually paid attention in OWL History?" Fred asked. "Why?"

"I'd already got enough sleep that night," George countered. "Anyway, I think they keep switching back and forth on stuff… is that what you mean?"

They looked at Hermione, who held up a hand to ask them to wait for a moment.

After swallowing, she nodded. "Yes, reports about Durmstrang are either very inconsistent or they keep changing things about the school. Some of the authors who write about it have said that it's somewhere in Norway, others in Belarus, most recently they've said Bulgaria… there's a theory they actually move it around a lot, which would be very difficult."

"So you mean someone might start in, um..." Harry cast around for a House name, "Wyvernwindow, and then in fourth year the headmaster says 'Nope, we don't have Houses any more!' and that's the end of it?"

"_Wyvernwindow_?" Ginny repeated. "Where did _that_ come from?"

Harry shrugged helplessly.

* * *

Over the next several days, Harry spent a lot of his spare time thinking about how the First Task was going to go.

Explaining what they wanted to Nora might be tricky, and making sure that she didn't get hurt was something that worried him a bit. They were going to be telling the Champions that Nora wasn't to be hurt, certainly, but there was always a bit of worry – even if Empress told Harry that dragons were not so fragile as he feared.

She also admonished him that if there was anyone who should know that, by his stories to her, it was _him_.

"That's a good point," Harry admitted, nodding to himself. "Thank you."

Empress chuckled at that.

"_I suppose sometimes being further away from a problem lets you see it more clearly,"_ she suggested. _"How are the hatchlings doing?"_

"Well, they're getting bigger, but they haven't said anything yet," Harry replied – they were considerably less than a month old, after all. "I think Ollie's starting to get the idea you don't break things without a really good reason, though."

"_An important lesson,"_ the ancient basilisk said solemnly.

"What are you going to be teaching them tonight?" Harry added.

"_Just trying to get them used to the meanings of words,"_ Empress told him. _"I'm doing the same thing that worked for Nora – I'm still a little surprised it worked, so I don't want to change a single thing in case that makes it not work."_

There was a tiny little _tink tink_ sound, like something hard striking stone a long way away.

"_Is it early enough we have time for a little of the book?"_ she asked.

"I think so," Harry decided, reaching for Dragonflight. "When we finish this one, do you want the sequel, or something else?"

"_Ask me when we reach the end of it,"_ Empress told him. _"How many books are there?"_

"At least twelve, I'd have to count them to be sure," was Harry's answer, as he opened it to their place and took the bookmark out. "Now, then..."

* * *

That weekend's trip to Fort William turned up a copy of the brand-new _The Dolphins of Pern_, which added yet another to Harry's collection – or, it would once he'd taken it home from the library and made a copy – and he spent about twenty minutes in the library in case there was something that would fit what Ron was after in there.

Harry did turn up a book about the history of the American space program, which sounded like a good start, and then crossing to the old book shop he paused only to check the weather before practically diving into the stacks to see what he could find.

There was just something about the aura that hung around a second hand book shop. Almost all of the books there were a little the worse for wear after their first owners, and many of them had clearly been well-loved and well-read, which meant that just about anything you picked up had a history.

It was kind of nice to know that if you found a book there and enjoyed it then you shared that in common with someone else – even down to the exact copy of the book. (Even though in this case it was more that Harry was after something for someone else).

Of course, the fact that Harry was in this shop at least once a month – unless he was down in the south of England – probably had something to do with how pleasantly familiar it felt.

Eventually, after getting distracted a couple of times (and then going out to check the weather again, just in case), Harry found something that seemed very much like what he was looking for. It was sort of an old book, from the early nineteen seventies, and described itself as 'an informal history of liquid rocket propellants' - and, much to Harry's surprise, the foreword was by no less a name than Isaac Asimov.

Reading the first few pages of the first chapter made Harry fairly sure that he'd found something that Ron could enjoy. He wasn't sure if Ron would follow everything on the first reading – he wasn't sure _he_ was following everything on the first reading – but the writing style was fun enough and it definitely seemed worth a read.

* * *

About two weeks into November a newspaper article appeared in the Daily Prophet about the Tournament, which was a little bit odd as far as Harry was concerned. It spelled Fleur Delacour's name four different ways (with a second 'e' in Delacour, without the 'u' in Fleur, both at once and then mercifully correct), got Cedric Diggory's house wrong and spent about two thirds of the column space on Viktor Krum – mentioning all sorts of things that Harry was fairly sure were a little bit unlikely.

For one thing, about thirty seconds after the papers arrived in the Great Hall during breakfast Krum had stood up and announced loudly that the only thing he'd said to this Skeeter person was 'no interview'. Which was a bit of a hint.

After it seemed like Krum (Harry didn't think he could call him Viktor at the moment) had calmed down a bit, Harry got down from his seat and went over to offer a few suggestions. The first one was the same one Professor Snape had given him, to try reading the Quibbler as it would probably help him calm down a bit, and the second one was simply that maybe he could talk to someone about getting the Daily Prophet to change their story.

Harry did have to admit he didn't know anyone in Britain who would be good at that, as it had never been necessary, but Draco seemed like the sort of person whose family would have to know that. So he pointed Krum at Draco, and said that if that didn't work he'd see if – say – Sirius had any ideas as well.

He wasn't _entirely_ sure why Draco gave him such a strange look at that.

* * *

Classes were getting more and more mixed up with talk about what the mysterious First Task might be – or at least the mysterious-to-everyone-else task – and on the Thursday (the seventeenth, just three days before the Sunday the Task was going to be on) Harry overheard someone in the Library say that they'd heard a manticore had been seen in the Forest.

"So that must be the task," Ron said, after a few seconds. "Right? Why else would there be a manticore here?"

"That doesn't sound like a very safe Task," Hermione frowned, looking up from the notes she'd taken in their Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson. "It's not as bad as a cockatrice or – or a basilisk or something like that, but manticores are well known for being extremely dangerous."

"Half of _Fantastic Beasts_ is known for being extremely dangerous," Dean pointed out. "The forest's got centaurs, wargs and acromantulas in there already."

"And sometimes a dragon," Ron added.

"That only happened once," Harry said, feeling a little embarrassed.

"Still counts," Ron shrugged.

"I agree with Ron on this one," Neville contributed. "It could be that Hagrid wanted a new pet, though."

"Manticores _talk_, Nev," Hermione countered. "They're not really pets."

"Same for dragons, now, at least if you speak dragon," Neville riposted. "And wargs, too – didn't Hagrid once say he tried to raise werewolf cubs under his bed? That must be what he meant."

"Honestly, I should probably ask June about that," Harry said.

"You'd probably have to ask her grandparents, it was fifty years ago," Hermione frowned. "Now… the main bit of our Defence homework is finding a new use in a fight for a spell that's not meant to be used in a fight."

She looked up. "I don't suppose anyone's already thought of one?"

"If I can get it right, the Summoning Charm would be good," Harry said. "I don't think you can summon someone's wand, but how often does an actual fight happen in an empty space?"

"Oh, that's a good one," Ron grinned. "You could summon a table from behind them – even if they realized what you were doing they'd have to turn around and stop the table."

"Exactly," Harry agreed.

"Kind of a pity you got that one, now," Ron added. "Hmm… what about Switching Spells? You could Switch someone's ears with a cactus or something, and then they wouldn't be able to tell what you were casting."

"Those are kind of tricky spells," Neville contributed. "I'm not sure you could actually _do_ that."

"Yeah, but he didn't say they had to be things you could _do_," Ron shrugged. "Just new uses."

"You wait, that'll be the practical," Dean guessed.

* * *

That Saturday, as part of making the arrangements for the _actual_ First Task, Harry went up to Professor Dumbledore's office.

To his surprise (when he'd heard about it) the password was 'Onions', and so the first thing he did when he got up to the office was ask _why_ the password was Onions.

"Sometimes I feel I want a little change," Dumbledore said brightly. "Caramelized onion?"

Harry took a piece of dried caramelized onion from the bowl Dumbledore offered, and he had to admit that it was in fact quite sweet.

"There, you see?" Dumbledore winked. "There is no good in one's password being too predictable, after all."

He smiled. "I do hope I'm not keeping you from your friends on this fine day."

"Not really," Harry shrugged his wings. "Ron's got this idea to see how fast brooms go when you're very high in the air, but that's going to be this afternoon."

Then he frowned, remembering what he'd overheard. "Professor… is there a manticore in the forest?"

"No, but there was one earlier this week," Dumbledore said. "We were discussing things, and I felt it prudent to have the discussion in the Forest rather than alarm anyone too much by bringing her into the school itself."

He steepled his hands. "And if it means that, perhaps, everyone is a little too ready to believe that a manticore might only be around Hogwarts for one of the Tasks… well, who is to blame for that but themselves?"

"That's sneaky, Professor," Harry said. "Are you sure you're not a Slytherin?"

"Alas, my underhandedness has come with age," Dumbledore replied. "Though I dare say that anyone organizing a tournament such as thus really must do all that is in their power to hide what the tasks actually _are_ from the contestants. Otherwise it might be dreadfully easy, and where is the fun in that?"

Harry nodded along.

"Now, as to the Task itself," Dumbledore went on. "Which is tomorrow, as I am sure you are aware. I am afraid you will be missing your usual chance to go to the library in the Muggle town, so if you do have any books due back I recommend you take them today as soon as we are done."

That made sense, and Harry said so even though he didn't actually have any books that were due back.

Dumbledore said that was excellent, and that he hoped that Harry did not have the same problems with library books as Dumbledore had had in the past.

"On one occasion, alas, I forgot about one for more than forty-five years," he explained. "It was so very overdue I had to buy the library a new shelf to make up for it. Now, the earlier you can come down to the enclosure that is to be built behind the Quidditch Pitch, the better..."

* * *

Late that afternoon, an hour or so before sunset, Harry landed next to Hermione with a slight _whoosh_ of air from his wings.

Ron followed him down, braking his Nimbus to a stop. "So, uh… do we have the answers yet?"

"How long do you think this is going to take?" Neville asked. "This is kind of impressively complicated Arithmancy."

"It's not that bad," Hermione replied. "The tricky bit is working out if we're _sure_."

She checked back over the numbers she'd written down before. "Okay, so it took two minutes going _up_ and a minute and a half going _down_, so we can be fairly sure that brooms go faster in a dive."

"We already knew that, right?" Ron asked.

"You have to time this kind of stuff," Dean shrugged, waving around the stopwatch he'd been using for the last few hours.

"And going from directly over Hogwarts to that beach took about four minutes at three hundred metres," Hermione went on.

"I thought it was a thousand feet?" Ron asked.

"It's metres if you're doing science," Hermione replied. "And at four thousand metres… it was a lot harder to tell. But at least Harry could still tell when you were right over Hogwarts."

She carefully averaged out the times for the high altitude runs – Harry hoped that he'd got the timing right about when to mirror-call Dean to start and stop the stopwatch – and frowned slightly as she wrote the result.

"Three minutes and fifty seconds," she declared. "But it looks like it's just basically the same time, because there was so much variability."

"So a broom goes at the same speed at high altitude?" Ron summarized.

"_About_ the same," Hermione clarified. "But… what did that book say… the pressure up there is about sixty percent of the air pressure at sea level. So it _should_ have been going noticeably faster if it was pushing just as hard."

"What does that mean for flying really high on a broom, then?" Neville asked.

"Well, it means that if you could breathe and take supplies and stuff, you _could_ fly to the moon on a broom," Hermione answered. "I think. Depending on if they work without any air at all. But it'd take, um, about two months?"

"So you'd need a really big broom and lots of supplies," Ron summarized. "Still, you could use a broom for steering a spaceship in orbit, couldn't you? Or maybe getting it _to_ space."

"If they work in space then that would work," Hermione said.

"I think we need to learn the Bubble-Head Charm," Harry suggested. "Then we can check if they work in space at all."

"We'd need a long time to do it," Hermione warned. "But… maybe not as long as all that, actually. There's still _some_ air even fifty miles up – I mean even eighty kilometres up – but once you get past maybe, um, fifteen kilometres then it'll probably work in space if it works there. And that's only about twelve or so minutes going up."

She pointed at Harry. "Don't forget that you're going to need a broom to get up there as well."

Harry nodded, and was about to ask about how much weight a broom could carry when he noticed someone coming out from the castle to meet them.

"...is that Malfoy?" Ron asked. "Where are his thugs?"

"Vincent and Gregory aren't _thugs_, Ron," Hermione hissed. "And he's called Draco."

"He's called Draco Malfoy," Neville supplied helpfully. "So either of them might work."

"Potter," Draco called, once he was a bit closer.

Harry waved helpfully, in case Draco needed reminding which one he was.

"Can I see the dragons?" the Slytherin boy asked.

"…what?" Ron said, entirely baffled.

"I can't ask that big Nora one, not and get an answer I'd understand," Draco went on, speaking as if it really should be quite obvious what he meant. "And the groundskeeper's busy _with_ the dragons half the time. So. Can I see the dragons?"

Harry didn't really see a reason to say no, partly because it wasn't as if the dragonets were going to be in danger from Draco.

* * *

Every time he went to see the three little dragons, now most of a month old, Harry was amazed with how quickly they were growing. Nora had grown just as fast, but there was just one of her and there were three of them – and, as a result of all that, they had one another to play with and were full of energy.

Sally came bounding over when they approached, wings flaring out to help her jump – not quite actually taking off, not yet – and skidded to a stop in front of Harry before regarding him with a tilted head.

"Which one's this?" Draco asked.

"Sally," Harry replied, watching her reaction carefully. He wasn't able to tell if she'd reacted more to the word than to any other word, but then Ron coughed.

"Mate," he said. "You answered in Dragon."

"Oh, right," Harry realized, and this time made sure to _not_ look at the Short-Snout dragonet. "She's called Sally. She's the only dragoness, the other two are boys."

"And they _are_ safe?" Draco added.

"They're what you'd call 'dragons'," Dean said. "So no, they're a bit dangerous."

"But so are wizards," Harry added.

"Sally! Sally!" Hagrid called, coming over the top of a rise in the ground. "There she is. Turn me back for five seconds and off she goes."

"Does that mean you've turned your back on the other ones?" Draco asked.

"...hadn't thought of that," Hagrid muttered. "Think you can bring Sally over, Harry? I've got to make sure Ollie or Gary hasn't buggered off."

He eyed Draco for a moment, then shrugged.

* * *

It was an unusual evening.

None of Harry's friends knew quite what to make of Draco, and Harry didn't either. It seemed like Draco didn't know what to make of Harry's friends either, though, and none of them mentioned anything about what had happened over the last few years.

Draco _did_ seem to be fascinated by the young dragons, though, and as far as Harry was concerned that probably meant he couldn't be all bad.

* * *

AN:

* * *

I'm going to choose to assume everyone's surprised at who the Champions are.

As for the book Harry got Ron, that's called Ignition! (Including the exclamation mark.) And is quite a wonderful if sometimes alarming read.

I know people have been asking for a book list. I don't actually have one compiled, unfortunately...


	59. Taking A Dragon To Task

The next morning – a Sunday – Harry didn't get up early.

He _could_ have done, but there wasn't much point because the Task wasn't until about one in the afternoon anyway. Still, he was involved (instead of just being a spectator) and so at about ten to twelve he had a quick bite to eat and flew down to the enclosure Dumbledore had talked about.

It turned out to be a brightly coloured tent in red, blue and yellow – big enough that Harry thought the word was 'pavillion' - and pitched, just as he'd said, right by the Quidditch Pitch. Interestingly it seemed that the actual task would be happening _in_ the Quidditch Pitch, which had been landscaped to have a quite spectacular array of rocky spikes and protrusions across most of the arena.

Harry tried not to think too had about what Ron would say, because it would probably not be very polite. Though Dean would probably say that it'd make the game a bit more tactical.

"Ah, Harry!" Mr. Bagman said, as Harry alighted just outside the enclosure. "I understand you're our expert?"

"Well, I can speak Dragonish," Harry replied.

"More than most can, I think," Mr. Bagman chuckled. "Dumbledore already told you what's going to happen?"

Harry just nodded, and then Nora poked her head through the door.

"Hi!" she said brightly. "I heard you!"

One of her claws gently prodded the fabric of the tent. "This house isn't very strong. I have to be very careful."

"Being careful is a good thing," Harry told her, then looked up at Bagman. "I'll start explaining it to her now, shall I?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," Mr. Bagman said. "Only… can you please use the back room? The front room just through here is where the Champions will be reporting in a few minutes."

Harry nodded, telling Nora that, and the dragoness backed up carefully so she could turn around.

Inside the pavillion, it was – much to Harry's surprise – _not_ larger on the inside. There were several chairs around the edge of the front room, and a large exit leading through to the back room, and Nora crouched her head a little before slowly and carefully making her way through the exit.

Her ridges almost touched the top of the doorway, and she had a look of intense concentration as she squeezed into the back room. Then Harry followed, and once he was through Mr. Bagman closed the opening with a wave of his wand.

The back room was a bit larger than the front room, with a long tunnel that Harry was fairly sure would have to lead out onto the Quidditch Pitch, and instead of a set of lots of chairs there were just the two. One of them was empty, but a large and familiar heron was sitting motionless on the arm of the other.

"Percy?" Harry asked, smiling.

There was a blur of motion, and Percy was duly standing there.

"Harry," he replied, nodding pleasantly.

"Nora?" Nora asked. "Are we saying names?"

Harry did his best not to laugh.

"I know you've talked about this with the Headmaster already, but I've got a few things to make sure you cover," Percy explained, holding up a page of notes for a moment.

"What about if I tell you what I'm telling her?" Harry asked. "And you can see if I leave something out?"

Percy indicated this would be fine, and Harry paused for a moment to gather his thoughts before starting to explain – first to Nora, and then repeating everything to Percy.

"This is part of a competition," he explained. "When we start, you're going to be out there-" he pointed out the door of the tent, the one that led out onto the pitch- "and there's going to be some pretend dragon eggs."

"Pretend eggs?" Nora repeated, frowning. "Why would you have pretend eggs? Real eggs have dragons in them. That's better."

Harry translated that for Percy, who chuckled slightly.

"The idea is that you have to pretend to protect them, but it doesn't matter if they get damaged," he resumed. "There are going to be two wizards and a witch trying to steal one of the eggs, and you're going to be trying to stop them – but it's all a game."

Nora's eyes almost crossed as she thought about that.

"So I try and scare them off?" she asked. "Or blow flame at them, but stop if they run away?"

"That's right," Harry agreed. "And Hagrid will be there, and I'll be there. If either of us tell you to stop, you have to stop straight away – and if it looks like you're going to get hurt, we'll tell the champions to stop straight away."

Another long frown of contemplation, then Nora nodded in understanding. "I get it!"

She waited patiently while Harry translated again, and Percy looked down his checklist. A quill ticked a few boxes, then Percy looked up again.

"I'm sure she knows not to damage any of the eggs herself," Percy mused, and Harry decided to mention that anyway once Percy was done. "And not to just carry the eggs off, they have to stay on the ground."

Nora looked a bit disappointed when Harry mentioned that second one.

"Oh!" she said suddenly. "Do I win something if I do well? If it's a game?"

When that was translated, Percy looked slightly embarrassed.

"I don't think we thought of that," he admitted.

"Dumbledore, Hagrid and I will try and think of something," Harry suggested, then promised that to Nora.

She nodded in understanding, and Percy went back to his notes.

* * *

They were still getting the last details of the arena ready for a while, long enough for Percy and Harry to be finished, and the Weasley boy (or, well, man, Harry supposed) gave them both a pleased nod.

"I'll take my place on the judges' stands," he said. "Mr. Bagman or Mr. Hagrid will let you know when Nora should take her place on the field."

Once he'd left, Harry sat down to wait, and Nora copied him.

He was glad he wasn't going to be one of the Champions. Just being involved was stressful enough.

"Eggs from a _dragon_?" Cedric asked, loudly enough for Harry to hear it through the fabric of the inner wall of the tent. (Then someone else said something about a manticore, but Harry couldn't quite tell who had spoken.)

* * *

They got the signal that it was okay to go out onto the pitch a minute or so later – unsurprisingly it was Hagrid who'd been sent to get Nora – and after she'd carefully picked her way down the tunnel Harry did the same before looking around to spot his friends.

Hermione and the others were in one of the closer stands, which made things easy, and Harry just took off to fly over and land next to the empty seat they'd kept.

"Was wondering if you'd be late, mate," Ron said, giving him a nod. "How long have you known about this?"

"Since, um, first week back," Harry answered. "Sorry I couldn't tell you."

"Nah, it's okay," Ron shrugged.

Harry elected not to actually sit in his seat, instead sort of half-leaning against the front wall with his wings tensed in case he needed to take off in a hurry, and got his first look at the arena now it had been set up.

The rock spires he'd seen before hadn't changed – it had probably taken hours to put them in place – but there was a circle of red granite slabs right in the middle of the arena, with about twenty multicoloured eggs inside.

It was sort of obvious that none of them were real dragon eggs, simply because – having seen real dragon eggs – Harry knew that they didn't come in quite such a riot of colours. There were silver ones, red and blue ones, ones with a pattern sort of like a chess board, pink ones with flowers on them and dark purple ones studded with stars. There were also three golden eggs, each one with a ribbon around it – yellow and black, blue, and red – and Harry had the distinct feeling that those were the ones for the Champions to try and collect.

Nora picked up one of the eggs, held it up to her ear, and shook it gently. Seeming satisfied, she put it back, then visibly noticed everyone watching her and flared her wings before shooting out a jet of flame.

"She reminds me of my sisters playing dress up," Dean said.

"Oi, Harry," Fred called. "You're helping out with the Task, right?"

"That's right," Harry agreed, then something clothy landed on top of his head.

Shaking the fabric off and opening it out, Harry realized it was sort of like one of those high visibility vests that you sometimes saw on building sites or Muggle TV or something like that – only it was the right size and shape to fit him.

"We came up with the idea last week," George explained. "It should last until tomorrow before the transfiguration starts wearing off."

Harry shrugged it on, fiddling around with it a bit to make sure he got his wings through the right holes, and by the time he was done Mr. Bagman had started doing the announcing.

Everyone began cheering, and a moment later Cedric came out onto the pitch.

"_The Hogwarts Champion, Cedric Diggory!"_ Bagman declared, and the cheering got louder for a moment. Harry shifted a bit, ready to see what Cedric was going to do, and the older boy paused before slowly approaching – his whole body tense.

When he passed a particular rocky obstacle that seemed to have fallen over, making it wider than it was tall, Nora bounded over a little way towards him and shot out a jet of fire. It looked to Harry like it was aimed a little bit high, so Cedric would only get caught in the edge, but he cast an _Aguamenti_ spell and dove for cover behind a convenient rock.

"_Well, he won't get far if he doesn't have a plan to deal with fire!"_ Bagman said, and Harry saw Nora look briefly up at where Mr. Bagman was announcing before returning her attention to Cedric's hiding place.

She blew a little bit more fire at it, sort of trying to curve it so it went over the rock, but that didn't actually reach where Cedric was hiding. Then Cedric jumped back out into the open, on the side he hadn't been before, and flicked his wand around to cast a spell.

A kind of silver shield appeared in front of him, one which looked like it had some kind of symbol on it – a badger? - and then Nora shot fire at that as well. Cedric ducked behind the rock again, leaving the shield, and Harry watched as the fire flowed around the shield to scorch the grass behind it.

"_Oh, I see!"_ Mr. Bagman gasped, as the shield dissolved again. _"A good spell, but it's not worked – he can't get away from the fire that way!"_

Then Cedric broke cover, pelting across the pitch towards another one of the rocky spires to shield him, and Nora flared her wings and roared at him. That made the crowd go 'ooh', but Cedric kept going, and got safely to cover before she actually breathed fire at him.

"_He's taking risks, this one,"_ Mr. Bagman said. _"I don't think _that_ is going to keep working!"_

"_Avis!"_ Cedric called, his voice faint with distance, and a small flock of birds burst out from the tip of his wand. Nora flamed at them, startled, and that distracted her for long enough to let Cedric get to another piece of rock – this one closer still to the faux nest.

This time, the dragoness didn't just wait for Cedric to do something, and started prowling around the rocky obstruction he was using. Cedric began moving around it as well, making sure he was on the other side of it from Nora, and the crowd kept going between back-and-forth muttering and the occasional gasp.

Nora kept stalking closer to Cedric, crouching down a little as she kept moving around the rock, until she was nearly where the rock would be between her and the nest.

Then she quickly moved her head the other way, startling Cedric just as he was about to make a break for the nest, and he yelped in surprise before shooting a jet of water at her.

Nora's reaction to that was to breathe flame back at him, coming quite close this time (it looked like the sleeve of Cedric's robes had caught fire) and Harry nearly called out for Nora to stop before seeing that she was letting Cedric get away again now he was moving away from the nest instead of towards it.

"_Is he all right?"_ Bagman asked, saying what most of the audience were thinking. Then he got his answer, as Cedric discarded his burning robes to leave him in just jeans and a shirt.

It sounded like quite a lot of the girls in the audience were pleased by that.

* * *

Harry sort of had to wonder what Fleur and Krum were thinking about all this.

They wouldn't be able to see anything, but they could certainly hear Mr. Bagman's commentary – to be honest it was probably audible in Hogsmeade – and when the commentary was things like 'Clever move, pity it didn't work!' and 'He's playing with literal fire, this one!' then they might be feeling a bit nervous.

Cedric had tried to make a run for the eggs twice now, the second time by Transfiguring a rock into a dog and sending it running off in another direction. Nora had followed it, interested, but then remembered what she was meant to be doing and turned back to see where Cedric was.

That had resulted in a scorch mark on the grass that left Ron groaning, and Cedric conjuring a large metal shield to protect himself before running back to somewhere that gave him a bit of cover. Now he was looking around, occasionally peeking out of cover to see what was going on and then doing something with his wand.

"Am I doing okay?" Nora asked, stopping halfway through pacing around the edge of the nest to look at Hagrid.

"All good," Hagrid answered, presumably in Dragonish.

Looking a little closer, Harry noticed a large wooden box next to Hagrid that was sort of like a cross between a crib and a crate. It came up to about Hagrid's chest, and was probably where Gary, Sally and Olly were for now – fortunately none of them could actually breathe fire yet, so they could be kept in there safely.

That made Harry wonder for a moment whether non-Ridgebacks would be easier or harder to teach. They got their fire later than Ridgebacks did, but that might mean that it would be more difficult to really get across the idea that they weren't supposed to set something on fire while they were young enough to convincingly inform.

Then again, Nora was sweet and biddable (which was a word Harry was fairly sure of the meaning of from seeing it in books) so maybe it wouldn't matter.

"_Oh, this is interesting!"_ Mr. Bagman said, and Harry looked back at the arena again.

Cedric had conjured half-a-dozen dogs, this time, and sent them all running in different directions – a husky, a labrador, a pit bull, all of them barking over and over as they pelted across the grass.

One of them went very close to Nora, and she stuck out a wing in its way to stop it. The dog fell over with a _thump_, and she picked it up carefully to look at it.

As far as Harry could see, it was just barking over and over again – not squirming to get away – and he wondered if that was just because Cedric had done a bit of a rush job on the Transfiguration. You had to give the Transfigured animal a sense of how it was meant to behave, or at least that was what he remembered.

Then there was a sudden gasp from the crowd, and Nora looked around in confusion.

One of the dogs had run right into the nest – and promptly come back out again, rolling a golden egg with a yellow-and-black band around the middle. The egg was making a sort of wobbly path across the grass, and Nora put down the dog in her paws before taking off with a _clap_ of wings.

When she was halfway to the rolling egg – which was halfway to the rocks – Cedric stepped out of cover, flourished his wand, and the dog turned back into a rock for a moment before Cedric transfigured the rock into a round cage that enclosed the egg completely.

"_Accio!"_ he shouted, and the cage flew across the grass. Nora missed it, pulling up just before crashing into the ground, and Cedric caught it like a football goalkeeper making a catch.

The impact knocked him over, but he held it high to show off the golden egg within.

There was a mighty roar from the crowd, and Mr. Bagman cheered along with them. _"And a wonderful ploy from the Hogwarts Champion! Well done!"_

"Stop now," Hagrid called to Nora, over the crowd. "Well done!"

"He got it?" Nora asked loudly, looking at Hagrid and then Cedric in confusion before looking up towards Harry in case he could shed some light on the matter. Harry nodded firmly, and Nora seemed to relax a little.

Deciding to help explain, Harry spread his wings and took off.

* * *

"Oh!" Nora said, tilting her head a little. "So it's okay if someone gets one."

"That's right," Harry agreed. "You have to try and make sure they don't get any eggs, but it's okay if they do."

Cedric had vanished back into the tent to be treated for a few minor injuries, but he came out again with someone who looked familiar – Harry thought it was the Ravenclaw seeker Cho Chang – as the scores were awarded, interestingly by being drawn in the air.

On the whole he got about eight points per person, though Headmaster Karkaroff only gave him five. Harry wondered if that meant that Karkaroff was from East Germany, because he'd heard his Uncle Vernon complaining about East German judges during the Olympics once, but he wasn't entirely clear on the details.

Then Bagman told everyone that the second competitor would be Fleur Delacoeur, and Harry took off again so he wouldn't get in the way.

* * *

Fleur seemed to be trying something different to Cedric. While he'd been very active, running around half the time, Fleur's approach was instead to stop a long way away – further than any of the scorch marks from Nora's fire – and raise her wand, before doing very little for at least a minute.

Harry wasn't at all sure what she was doing, and Nora didn't seem to have much idea either. After the dogs, though, she seemed a bit reluctant to leave the immediate area of the nest she was protecting, and Harry couldn't really blame her.

"Not a lot going on, is there?" Neville asked.

"Maybe that's the point?" Hermione said. "I imagine she has a plan already, she's had a lot longer to think about it than Cedric did."

Fleur took a step forwards, and Nora tilted her head.

"_I'm not sure that was wise!"_ Bagman shouted gleefully.

Then Fleur pointed her wand at her throat, and a moment later her magically-amplified voice said something sharply in French.

Hermione squeaked in surprise, and everyone turned to look at her.

"Oh, um..." she began. "She said that, that he should shut up and let her get on with it. And… and there was a lot of swearing."

* * *

Nora looked quite confused by what had just happened, and watched Fleur carefully as the French witch dispelled her _Sonorus_ spell before starting to slowly approach again.

Admittedly Harry wasn't entirely sure what was going on either. Fleur had her wand out, and occasionally it moved in little twirling patterns, but if she was saying something or casting any verbal spells then Harry couldn't hear it from where he was.

It was certainly nothing like what Cedric had done.

"Blimey, I kind of get why Bagman was getting testy," Dean muttered. "Is she actually going to do anything?"

Even Nora seemed bored, and she let out a jaw-cracking yawn where after a moment she covered her muzzle with a paw for politeness' sake. Then she shook her head a few times. "Sorry!"

Another yawn came a moment later, and Harry wondered for a moment if maybe Nora hadn't got enough sleep last night.

Then she took off, spreading her wings and slamming them down in a sudden burst of energy, and hovered for a long moment. That done, she moved forwards a little, banked around and flew a half circuit of the stadium before returning to where she'd been before.

Fleur had moved closer while Nora had been airborne, but not quite up to the same distance as the scorch marks Cedric had incurred. She put her hands on her hips for a moment, then started moving her wand in little twirling patterns again.

Nora watched her carefully, then started yawning again. In reaction, she took off again – her wings driving her into a hover – and stayed there.

Fleur said something sharp and French, then pointed her wand at her dress and sprayed it with water. Some of the boys in the crowd started whistling, which didn't sound very pleasant to Harry but then again a lot of the girls had liked it when Cedric had to take his robes off. So maybe it was just the same thing from a different angle.

While Harry was contemplating that, Fleur pocketed her wand and broke into a run. Nora shot fire to try and warn her off, but Fleur just skipped to the side slightly instead of retreating. The flame flashed down her side, and Harry leaned forwards to see if she was okay – raising his wings in case he had to jump in and intervene.

The Beauxbatons champion seemed completely unfazed by nearly being set on fire, and after a puzzled glance Nora started breathing fire where Fleur was going to _be_ instead.

"_What's going on?"_ Bagman asked. _"This is a very risky move by the French champion!"_

Harry was sure that Fleur was going to have to stop, or at least move around the jet of flame, right up until she didn't. She went straight into Nora's jet of fire, vanishing into the breath, and there was a drawn-out gasp that ran right around the stadium.

Nora gasped as well, her flames stopping, but then Fleur came back out the other side.

Her dress was a bit tattered around the edges, and visibly steaming, but at the same time Harry could clearly see just _why_ she'd run directly into dragonflame. Her head had changed into the head of a bird, and a pair of scaly wings had burst from her shoulders, and she ran the rest of the way to the nest before snatching up the blue-banded golden egg.

"_And miss Delacour has the egg!"_ Bagman announced. _"Now all she has to do is get away with it!"_

Nora shook her head slightly, visibly trying to recover from her surprise, then jumped. Her wings boosted her jump and turned it into a sort of half-glide, and she landed with a _thump_ so that Fleur was between her and the nest.

Fleur jinked right, and Nora spread a wing to block her before sort of hopping sideways so Fleur couldn't just keep going right and get around her. Then Fleur's free hand came up and she threw a ball of fire, one which flashed towards Nora's head and made her flinch, and used that moment of distraction to run to the _left_ and dodge past Nora.

The Ridgeback's tail flicked around, knocking Fleur over and sending her rolling, and for a moment Nora looked anxious instead of trying to stop her foe. That lasted until Fleur rolled back upright and threw another fireball at her, then Nora's whole expression brightened and she fired a little burst of flame back at Fleur.

Everyone in the crowds was cheering or shouting now as the sort-of-boring start turned into a chaotic-and-exciting finish, and as Nora tried to block Fleur from getting away while Fleur alternately threw fireballs and jumped or dodged to get a little further each time.

Fleur threw herself down, rolling underneath Nora's wing, then got back upright again with a spring aided by the push of her Veela's wings. She lobbed a fireball back, then juggled the egg from one hand to the other to throw a second fireball that caught her draconic opponent by surprise.

That one exploded right in front of Nora's nose, making her cough, and Fleur sprinted the last few yards to reach the ring of stones. The whistle blew at that point, and Harry took off to make sure Nora knew to stop – though she seemed to have already got the idea.

"_My word!"_ Bagman was saying, over and over. _"My word – that was exciting!"_

* * *

"I didn't know there were any people who weren't dragons who could do that," Nora said, sounding distinctly puzzled. "Did you know she could do that?"

"I didn't," Harry told her. "And I don't think the last one can, so be careful."

"Okay," Nora agreed, nodding her head to show she understood, then curled her tail around and fiddled with it. "Harry? That girl threw fire at me. If the last one throws magic at me, is it okay if I throw fire at them?"

"If you're careful with it," Harry said. "Remember, you're a dragon, so most magic can't hurt you much, but humans can be hurt a lot by fire."

"Okay!" Nora nodded again.

She looked up at the trails of light the judges were sending into the air. Fleur had refused to go to get medical attention because she hadn't actually been hurt, which was entirely logical as far as Harry was concerned, but it looked like she was taking a few points down for running directly into dragon fire (and possibly for swearing).

That did make Harry wonder if anyone who wasn't going last could possibly get full points, though. Surely if the person who came first made no mistakes and got the egg in five minutes, and then the person who came second made no mistakes and got the egg in three minutes, wouldn't that mean that the second person did better?

"What are those?" Nora asked. "There was one pattern three times."

"Oh, that's a nine," Harry told her. "You know how numbers go one, two, three..?"

"Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten," Nora nodded, making scratches in the ground one at a time. "But what's that squiggly thing?"

"That's a way of writing nine without making nine scratches," Harry told her.

He was going to say more, realizing that Empress couldn't really teach her how to _read_ numbers, but Mr. Bagman started saying that the Durmstrang Champion was about to show up so he decided he'd better get out of the way.

* * *

When Krum entered the arena, Harry wondered for a moment if he'd have a bit of an advantage dealing with crowds.

Then he frowned, because that prompted the thought that actually Cedric had been playing Quidditch for years so he'd seen big crowds as well. And because Fleur was a veela – or part-veela or whatever, but she had the veela powers – then it made sense that people would look at her a lot too.

Wondering about how it worked for veela – whether any woman whose mother was a veela was a veela, or whether there were men who were veela as well (even though there hadn't been any of them at the World Cup) – distracted Harry for a moment, then he shook his head and started properly paying attention again.

Krum started by taking out his wand, and aimed carefully for a long moment. _"Stupefy!"_

The red Stunner bolt flashed out towards Nora, and she moved her head a little to the side. Harry couldn't quite tell if Krum would have hit what he was aiming for without that, but the red attack struck her on the side of the head and burst into a cloud of sparks.

"Oh!" Nora said, realizing something, and turned to Hagrid. "He's throwing magic at me! Does that mean I can breathe fire at him?"

"Yes, but not hurt him too much," Hagrid replied.

Krum watched that with a slight frown, then sent another spell flicking towards Nora. This one was blue – Harry didn't recognize it – and instead of hitting Nora's scales it suddenly went _snap_ and turned into an explosion.

Wings flaring, Nora took off – but instead of flying straight for Krum, she hovered for a long moment and looked back down at the nest she was meant to be protecting.

Everyone watched to see what she would do next – then she visibly took a breath, and shot out a long blast of intense fire at the pitch surface about ten feet from the faux-eggs.

For a moment the grass by the jet itself just crisped up. Then it caught fire, and while most of the grass was too lush and green for the fire to spread it still ended up black and smouldering in the area Nora had attacked.

"Oh, come on..." George sighed. "If the rocks weren't bad enough..."

Still mostly hovering, Nora flew in a circle and kept breathing fire except when she had to inhale. It took almost a minute, during which time Krum shot another couple of spells at her (both of which hit her scales) but when she was done there was a kind of smouldering black-and-red line around the whole of the nest.

Satisfied with that, Nora began flapping more strongly. She gained height, then started cupping her wings to push air behind her as well as below and transitioned smoothly into normal flight.

"_Bombarda!"_ Krum called, pointing his wand in her direction again. This time there was a bigger explosion, one which seemed to knock Nora aside slightly, and she banked a little to recover before exhaling a wide burst of flame.

Now that he'd seen what it was like when Nora was actually breathing her hottest flame – which had a visible intensity that was hard to miss – Harry could tell that what she was doing to Krum now _wasn't_ her hottest flame. A bit like what she'd been doing to block Fleur earlier, it was wider and less focused and even somewhat smokier, and when Krum dove out of the way it seemed to come quite close to him but none of his clothes ended up set on fire.

There was a stifled groan of disappointment from much of the stands, including from two seats over from Harry.

"Hermione!" Ron gasped.

"I'm just..." Hermione began, as Dean started laughing. "That is – I just want for him to be treated the same as the others!"

Ron grumbled something, then told Dean that it would be really helpful if he would kindly shut up.

Krum hadn't stopped casting spells, keeping a wary eye on Nora and moving from rock to rock as he did. It looked like he had a sort of pattern, where he'd throw a spell at Nora and then either run for the next safe place or duck back into cover depending on how she seemed to be reacting.

He was mostly sticking either to some kind of blasting curse(like the _Bombarda_ from before, or a new one for Harry called _Confringo_) or a more disabling sort of spell, like a stunner or a body-bind. For the latter ones he seemed to be aiming for Nora's head, perhaps for her eyes, but they were quite a small target and she was moving enough that he hadn't got her with one yet.

"Krum is pretty good," Neville said. "You know how a lot of wizards stand there and throw spells? He's not doing that."

"Is that from that sword book that Harry got you?" Ron asked.

"A bit," Neville shrugged. "There's other stuff too. But footwork's really important."

"_Conjunctivus!"_ Krum shouted, and this time he'd aimed right – or, at least, Nora was in the wrong place when the spell arrived. It flashed into her eyes and she yelped, pawing at one for a moment before shaking her head and half-growling half-keening.

"_And it looks like Mr. Krum has hit the dragon! My word, I don't think she can see!"_ Mr. Bagman shouted. _"He's got a clear run to the egg now!"_

Harry tensed up again, in case he'd have to intervene – this time to make sure _Nora_ wasn't hurt instead of her opponent – but Nora looked like she was just about keeping on top of things.

She dropped her tail to the ground, then landed as soon as her tail was touching – maybe so she could tell how high up she was – and then sniffed the air for a moment before beginning to lope in the direction of the nest.

Krum had broken into a run himself as soon as the spell he'd cast landed, and when he was about to reach the fire-moat Nora had set up he raised his wand again. _"Extinguere! Ventus!"_

Part of the smouldering grass went quiescent, and then a wave of wind blew the smoke away. Krum ran through to the nest, picked up the egg (Harry was guessing on that bit, because the rest of the smoke still made it a bit hard to see) and sprinted back the way he'd come.

"_And our third champion has his egg!"_ Mr. Bagman announced.

Harry took off as soon as he'd said that, flying over to where Nora had slowed down as she reached the burned ring of grass. She was moving more carefully, making sure she wouldn't squash any of the eggs, and Harry pulled up to hover just outside the smoke cloud.

"Nora!" he called, getting her attention. "You can stop – great work!"

"Thanks!" Nora replied, then rubbed at the side of her muzzle again. "My eyes hurt a lot. Can someone help with that?"

"Nora!" Hagrid said, skidding to a halt a few feet from her and waving his arms so he wouldn't fall over. "You did good! Hug?"

"Hug?" Nora repeated, brightening visibly. "Yes!"

Even though by now Nora was quite a bit bigger than Hagrid, especially counting all of her neck and tail and wings and stuff, Hagrid could still give her quite an impressive embrace.

* * *

Because of all the times Krum had been visibly nearly set on fire, he had to spend a few minutes in the Champions' Tent first, and Harry decided to go back up to join his friends so he could watch the results with them.

"Was Krum all right?" was Fred's first question. "I know he's one of the other champions, but he's damn good at Quidditch. Be a shame if he got hurt."

"He looked a lot better than at the World Cup," Harry answered, but he was already pondering. "Why is he Krum?"

"That's… his name?" Ginny asked carefully.

"No, I mean, Cedric is Cedric, and Fleur is Fleur, but Krum is Krum," Harry tried to explain, then realized faintly that it sounded like he was going mad. "And Krum is a surname, but Fleur and Cedric are first names."

"Oh, _right_," Neville realized. "_That's_ what you meant."

He chuckled. "It's sort of like Draco. Or Malfoy. Or both."

"Maybe it's because it's the shorter bit of the names?" Hermione asked. "Viktor Krum is a two syllable first name and a one syllable surname, but Fleur Delacour is a one syllable first name and a three syllable surname. And Cedric's surname is Diggory, which is longer."

"Does that mean we have a reason to call Malfoy Malfoy?" Ron began, then shook his head. "No, that doesn't work, because Draco and Malfoy are as long as one another."

"It does mean there's a reason to call Crabbe and Goyle Crabbe and Goyle," Dean consoled him. "Because 'Crabbe and Goyle' is only as long as Gregory, and you're getting two for the price of one."

Harry smiled, then noticed a tracery of light as the judges began sending up their numbers.

Krum got an eight, three nines and a ten, which was a very good result, and which (if Harry was working this out right) meant he was in first place – though the other two champions were only a few points behind him, so it wasn't really first by much.

"Huh," Ginny said. "I think Percy gave exactly the same score to all three Champions?"

"They did all get the egg," Fred replied. "And he was giving his score fourth, maybe he thought the difference was already included?"

"That or he's being really weirdly fair," Lee Jordan said. "You know, like the kind of fair where he inspected us every time we got back from Hogsmeade."

"That he knew about..." George mused.

Then there was a kind of polite cough that echoed around the arena.

"_I would like to thank everyone for turning up,"_ Dumbledore said, pleasantly and loudly. _"If anybody has not turned up, do please consider yourself not to be thanked, though I wish you good luck in whatever else it was you were doing with your time."_

"Completely mad," George said faintly.

"_I would also like to extend my thanks in particular to everyone who has helped to make the First Task of the resumed Triwizard Tournament into such a fine experience, and of course to our three Champions!"_ Dumbledore continued, prompting a wave of applause.

Harry realized that that meant he was probably included, but the Champions were as well so he applauded for them. It felt less odd than applauding himself.

"_I do hope that whatever the next Task may be develops into as pleasant an experience,"_ Dumbledore went on, once the sound of the applause had subsided. _"I believe our Champions will be being told right now, or very soon, what they will need to know about it, and I will be quite interested to see their solution to whatever problem it is they will be presented with. I look forward to seeing you all on the Twenty-Fourth of February – or sooner if you intend to attend the Yule Ball or have a meal at Hogwarts between then and now."_

"What _is_ the Yule Ball?" Dean asked.

"It's mentioned in Hogwarts-" Hermione began, but Dumbledore had something else to say.

"_And, last of all, may I ask for a round of applause for our very own school mascot and dragon who made this task quite unforgettable, Nora!"_

One of the wizards who came onto the field to help while Krum was being checked over in the medical tent seemed to have fixed Nora's eyes, and she looked around her as scattered applause grew into a wave (and one which Harry fully participated in). Her head dipped down to ask Hagrid a question, then her wings ruffled a little, and she seemed to not know quite how to react.

Harry knew how she felt.

* * *

AN:

* * *

And that's a first task.

It was interesting to try and expand out the descriptions we're given in the book. Cedric took fifteen minutes in canon, and Fleur ten; Krum was faster, but Canon Harry was the quickest.

Of course, the presence of Nora changes things slightly.


	60. A Dragon Ball

"What was that you were saying about the Yule Ball?" Dean asked Hermione, as they headed back up to the castle. "If it's in _Hogwarts: A History_, how come it's never been mentioned before now?"

"Because there hasn't been one for two hundred years," Hermione replied. "Or just over two hundred years."

"It's about the Tournament, right," Neville realized. "And because there hasn't been one since the eighteenth century, there hasn't been a Yule Ball since the eighteenth century either."

He frowned. "Wait, is that why we all had to get Dress Robes?"

"We all had to get Dress Robes?" Harry asked. "I think I must have missed that."

"It was in the letter," Ron contributed gloomily. "I sort of hoped it wasn't, mind you. Then I'd have a reason to do something permanent to what Mum got me."

"Didn't you read your Hogwarts letter?" Hermione asked, in tones of mild disapproval.

"Sirius said he'd get everything because he was heading into Diagon Alley anyway," Harry defended himself. "Maybe he didn't bother to get Dress Robes because he never actually needed them and I'd have to have them fitted."

He frowned. "Actually, _do_ we need to go to the Yule Ball? It doesn't really sound like the sort of thing I'd be interested in."

"I'm not sure if I want to or not," Dean said. "I'm pretty sure I don't have any _actual_ dress robes, we didn't get them in Diagon Alley and I had a dressing gown in my stuff this year."

"I'll swap?" Ron suggested. "Mine are all maroon."

"Wait, hold on," Neville asked. "What are the rules for who goes to the Yule Ball? Is it open to everyone?"

"Traditionally it's only open to fourth years and up," Hermione reported. "But I think there's an exception for younger students if they have dates from older years."

"So what about-" Neville began, then looked around for Ginny. She was a little way behind, listening to Fred and George discuss how they'd have dealt with Nora (Harry listened for a moment and it sounded like it involved some kind of sweet called a Canary Cream). "Ginny? Did you have to get dress robes this year?"

Ginny nodded, and Neville returned his attention to Hermione. "So how does that make sense, getting all the lower years to buy dress robes they might not even be able to use? The Triwizard Tournament is every _five_ years, and Ginny's in Third Year – not only can she not take part in the tournament, but she'll have graduated by the time it comes around again."

"To be honest I don't think most Second Years will be able to use their Second Year dress robes in Seventh Year," Dean contributed. "Unless they didn't have to get them."

The conversation went on from there, wondering about wizard fashion (something which Ron and Neville were unable to shed any light on) and Harry couldn't help wondering whether he should try to fix his missing robes at all.

It felt like that was something he should only do if he was actually _interested_ in going to the Yule Ball, and – though the only thing he really knew about it at this point was that it was that it was a ball – he didn't think he was.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Harry got to see when Nora got her reward for helping out so well with the Triwizard Tournament.

Professor Flitwick had done most of the work on it after someone had had the idea, and he was along to watch as she got it. So was Professor Kettleburn, ready with the note-taking attachment to his artificial hand, and Charlie Weasley helped Hagrid carry the big heavy wooden chest out before putting it down in front of her.

"Now, remember," Charlie began, "it's tougher than normal, but don't be too rough or you'll break it."

"Careful you do not break it," Hagrid translated.

"Break what?" Nora asked, giving the chest a poke. "This seems heavy."

"It's not the chest, it's what's in the chest," Harry called, and she gave it a more focused (and curious) examination.

Hagrid undid the clasp, shifted so he was behind the lid, and pulled it open. Nora leaned forwards a little as he did, then reared back in surprise as a big silver Snitch – almost as large as a Bludger – hovered up out of the chest.

It stopped there for long enough to let Nora get over her surprise, and then Hagrid gave it a poke with his umbrella and it went zooming off – up, then over towards Hogwarts proper, then doing a corkscrew movement.

"Fetch?" Nora asked, eyes bright and wings half-raised.

"Fetch!" Hagrid agreed, and Nora took off with a _whoosh_. She charged straight after the Silver Snitch, only to miss as the enchanted ball jinked abruptly to the side, then Nora used her wings to slow to a halt in mid-air and looked around for where it had gone.

"It was quite interesting doing the enchantments!" Professor Flitwick said, as Nora began chasing her new toy again – a little more cautiously this time. "It's not quite as good as a real Golden Snitch, of course, there are a few tricks I don't know – but it's specially enchanted so it won't go more than two miles away from the chest it's kept in. That's instead of it staying inside the bounds of the Quidditch Stadium."

"It looks like she's having a lot of fun with it," Harry agreed. "It seems a bit slower than the snitches from the game, though?"

"Oh, that's a setting," Flitwick told him. "There's a key in the chest you can use to wind it up or down to make it easier or harder. At the moment it's… oh, I'd say about halfway up."

Nora missed snagging the Silver Snitch again, but this time she was spreading her wings as she did and so it bounced off her wing leather with an audible _boom_.

"Is there a way to make it come back?" Hagrid asked. "Don't remember if you mentioned that."

"Yes, it'll come back to the chest if you call it," Flitwick agreed. "Come on, Rubeus, I'll show you how to do it."

* * *

For the rest of November, it seemed like the Yule Ball was almost the only thing anyone was talking about.

The way they talked about it was different for different people. Mostly from younger students Harry heard disappointment or envy, or at least confusion, about why it was that they couldn't go when Fourth Year students could.

That came from both boys and girls, which was a bit strange because once you got to students who were _in_ fourth year everything changed. Suddenly it seemed as though almost all the girls – Hermione was the only exception Harry noticed – were giggling about it and talking in the corners about who they wanted to go with and who they hoped was going to ask them. And what they were going to wear, which was just baffling as far as Harry was concerned – surely they already knew, because of how they'd had to get dress robes?

The boys, on the other hand, were all gradually developing a sort of hunted look. Harry would have called it a harried look, except that as soon as he thought of that word he imagined Sirius saying it, and it wasn't really how he felt about it – he felt baffled, and everyone else seemed to be preparing themselves for the hardest things they'd ever done in their lives.

It all seemed very complicated to Harry, and – admittedly not for the first time – the things he'd read in books didn't really help. There were two ways that books he'd read treated things like balls, which was that either everything went quite well and it was just sort of a background to a single important conversation, or everything went badly wrong and the bit he read was about the ball going wrong (and sometimes that meant everyone died, while other times it just meant that the people involved ended up hating each other).

* * *

"So who are you asking?" Ron said after Transfiguration that Thursday, with a kind of resigned dread in his voice.

"I'm not sure I'm planning on _going_," Harry replied.

"Blimey, it'd be nice to be able to try that," Ron admitted. "My mum would tie my tail in a knot if I missed the only reason she got me dress robes."

"Could she actually do that?" Neville asked. "Don't you only have a tail when you want to have one?"

"She'd find a way," Ron declared, as they crouched to pass through a tapestry one by one.

"I'd suggest that you lend your robes to me, but that wouldn't work for two reasons," Dean said.

"Why not?" Ron asked. "That sounds like a great plan to me. Right?"

"Well, firstly, maroon isn't my colour," Dean explained.

"It's not _my_ colour, but that's not going to save me," Ron muttered.

"How do you even tell what someone's colour _is?_" Neville asked.

"It's about complementary colours, right?" Hermione checked. "Some colours go well together, and some clash."

"Right, it's a painting thing," Ron realized. "That makes more sense."

"And second," Dean resumed, "If Ron didn't go, that would disappoint Hermione."

"...that doesn't make any sense, right?" Ron asked. "Right, Hermione?"

"No sense at all," Hermione agreed.

Harry noticed that both of their ears had gone a bit pink for some reason.

* * *

After almost a week of thinking about the Yule Ball – including a slightly awkward meeting of the Unusually Shaped club where everyone else was a bit mopey about not being able to go, except for Anna who seemed cheerful regardless – Harry was feeling a bit fed up with it, and on his Sunday trip to Fort William he decided that he was going to try and _not_ think about the Yule Ball for as long as possible.

It seemed distinctly unfair that it was still on his mind after he'd decided he probably wasn't going.

It was quite a fine day, at least, and Harry flew out past Fort William and out to sea to really stretch his wings. He scudded along the surface of the water with his tail nearly trailing in the waves, then tilted up and climbed past the clouds until he could see the whole of the inlet with Fort William at its tip all at once.

Then he dove back down, air curling off the tips of his wings, and got up to really a quite high speed – fast enough that when he reached Fort William he had to circle a few times to shed speed and land safely.

That already meant he was feeling better, but then during his time in town Harry decided on impulse to go into a pub. He'd had vague thoughts of getting a snack while he was in there, but to his delight it turned out that going into a pub sometimes really _did_ result in a talk with a bartender who was able to dispense excellent advice and help you sort out the things you were worried about.

It was certainly a more pleasant discovery that something from a book was real than – say – an evil ring that might try to take over your mind.

* * *

Buoyed by his talk with the bartender, Harry made up his mind quite firmly on the way back to Hogwarts, and it felt much more like a pleasant decision than the one he'd made before. In an odd sort of way, it felt like he now wasn't as worried because he'd made the _right_ choice (while before he'd made a choice which turned out to _not_ be the right choice and that was why he'd been uncomfortable) which was that the whole 'going out with someone' part of the Yule Ball was only the point of it if you wanted it to be. Otherwise it was just a chance to spend time with people, especially people from the other schools which were the whole point of the Triwizard Tournament in the first place.

So Harry could invite someone else if they wanted to go and couldn't have gone otherwise, or he could just show up by himself and talk.

And when he explained all that to Sirius at Dogwarts, his godfather considered it for almost a minute.

"Maybe I should have expected that," he said, eventually.

"You mean that I'd be worried about it?" Harry checked. "Sorry I didn't ask you."

"No," Sirius replied, and it looked to Harry as if a grin was trying to escape onto his face. "I mean I should have expected that you'd be confused about whether you could go to the Ball on your own. It's what James did, you know."

Now Harry was confused all over again. "But there wasn't a Yule Ball while you were at Hogwarts."

"That's not what I mean, Harry," Sirius replied. "You should know better than most that your father often went stag."

After a long moment of thought, Harry got it.

After a much shorter moment of thought, Sirius got a cushion to the face.

* * *

"I think everyone's going a bit Yule Ball mad," Dean said, halfway through the five of them doing their Defence homework.

"Really?" Ron asked, in completely flat tones. "No. I never would have guessed. What a surprise."

"You weren't in Divination today," Dean explained. "Most of the class wanted to know how they could predict who their best date was."

He shrugged. "We ended up doing horoscopes to try and find who would have matching horoscopes on Christmas Day, or close enough to work."

"It was surprisingly logical," Hermione contributed. "For Professor Trelawney, at least."

"It does sound better than nothing," Harry agreed, thinking about it. "But you don't really need to go with someone who's a good date at all, do you?"

He waved his quill in the air to punctuate his point, then put it down and waved his paw instead so nobody would end up with ink on their spell diagrams. "Even if you wanted to go with someone in fourth year, and someone you knew who was in third year wanted to go with someone who was in third year, you could organize it so all four of you could go to the ball and then just switch around once you're there."

"That's-" Hermione began, then stopped. "...actually, I _don't_ think that breaks the rules. It just sort of gets around them."

"So does that mean you _are_ going to be coming to the ball?" Neville checked. "Because you're probably going to need to get some dress robes, and the place in Hogsmeade's going to be swamped."

"Especially if that idea of Harry's spreads," Dean pointed out. "There's going to be loads of first, second and third years who suddenly have the chance to go."

Harry thought about that, and decided it was a good point.

"Third years," Hermione corrected. "First and Second Years can't go to Hogsmeade."

"They'll probably get some kind of exception?" Neville shrugged.

"Is Diagon Alley going to be busy next weekend?" Harry asked. "I think that's a Hogsmeade weekend, but if I go to Dogwarts and to Diagon Alley then it might be less busy."

"Well, there's going to be Christmas shopping," Dean guessed. "But how bad can Christmas shopping be if there's only a few thousand wizards and witches in the country? There's probably more people on one floor of Harrods during the Christmas rush than in the whole of Diagon Alley."

He snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah, I might ask to come along, because I don't have dress robes either."

"Kind of wish mine were better," Ron said, a bit wistfully. "Don't suppose yours are bad too, Nev? Hermione?"

"I've got some," Hermione replied, but her tone was a bit dubious. "I had this idea of colouring up my feathers, though."

That made everyone stop for a moment.

"That sounds _really cool,"_ Ron declared. "You're thinking of going to the Yule Ball as a dinosaur?"

"Well, didn't your dad say that wizards like to show off when they get together?" Hermione asked, blushing slightly. "I thought that would work..."

"I whole-heartedly agree with this idea," Dean contributed. "And – wait, hold on, I know you, Hermione. You've already looked up the spell to colour your feathers, right?"

"I couldn't find one that worked on parts of an animal," Hermione replied. "I did get one that works on clothes, but I think I'll just have to use makeup paints or something."

Dean turned to study Ron carefully, then nodded to himself.

"...okay, now I'm worried?" Ron said, a little nervously. "What does that mean?"

Harry sat back a bit, deciding that he probably wasn't going to be finishing his Defence homework until this was over.

"Go and get your dress robes," Dean told Ron. "If you don't like maroon, they're not going to be maroon."

* * *

It took a few minutes for Ron to come back down, holding his bundled-up dress robes like he didn't want anyone to get too good of a look at them – Harry could see maroon and some fluffy lace – but Dean went upstairs too, and vanished for several minutes longer than Ron had.

"...he is coming back, right?" Ron asked eventually. "He was rummaging in his stuff, but he must have found it by now."

"There's only one way out of the dorm room stairs," Neville said.

"Unless he flies out," Harry added, carefully filling out another bit of the spell diagram they were doing for homework. "Hmm… next bit is what to do if someone has a Protego shield up. Could I just say hit them with my tail?"

"Would your tail go through a Protego spell?" Neville asked.

Harry shrugged, but then looked over to the stairs as Dean came back down.

He'd brought with him his latest big box of pencils, plus a pad of white paper, and put the paper down on the table (in about the only clear space) before unboxing the pencils and sketching a few colours.

"So the idea is, we use magic to re-colour your robes," he explained. "If the main problem is that they're maroon, that is."

"I'm not a hundred percent sold on the lace, either," Ron said, snorting. "But the maroon _is_ the big problem."

"Well, then, what colour would work better for you?" Dean asked, holding up the paper.

There was a big swatch of Ron's hair colour, and next to it were three or four shaded-in colours. One was a bright forest green, another was blue, and then there was a sort of deep purple.

Ron looked at them, then at his robes, and unfolded them to look more closely. His little animated griffin statuette fell out of them, spun around in mid-air until it was able to start hovering, and zipped up to glare at him.

"Sorry," Ron apologized. "I didn't realize you were there."

The griffin cocked its head, then seemed to accept that as an apology and sat on the table.

"Wondered why I hadn't seen him for a week," Ron added. "Um… the green, I think?"

Hermione had obviously worked out where this was going, and she had her wand out already. She waved it in a careful movement – sort of two circles with the same downstroke – and then tapped the collar of the robes. _"Pigmento fabricae."_

A sweep of forest green spread from the point her wand had touched, leaching down the robes as if it were soaking into the fabric. The first few shades of change moved quickly, then the greener colours followed slowly behind, and within ten seconds or so the whole of the robes were like a spectrum – from bright green right at the top down to a sort of brunette at the wrists and maroon at the base of the fabric.

After another ten seconds or so, Neville coughed.

"Is it going to move any more than that?" he asked.

"I… don't think so," Hermione replied. "I should have remembered – um – don't wizard clothes usually have a spell on them to make them colour safe?"

"Well, now I look sort of like a Christmas tree," Ron said, inspecting them. "The good thing is it's still better than just maroon everywhere."

* * *

It was next Saturday that Harry went to get his robes fitted, and Dean tagged along as well to sort out how he didn't have any yet either.

Sirius was only too happy to Floo them through into the Leaky Cauldron, and to accompany them to make sure nobody decided that they were terminally lost Muggles or something, and Harry got his first sight of Diagon Alley at Christmas.

Much to his delight, it was snowing. It wasn't snowing anywhere else in London, but it was snowing in Diagon Alley – just a light, glittery dusting that rested on window tops and made the air look pleasantly clean.

It was also a bit less busy than Harry had expected, perhaps because it was still two weeks until Christmas, and they were halfway to Madam Malkins' before Harry suddenly spotted a familiar face.

"Remus!" he said brightly. "How are you?"

Remus still had some marks from his fight in the summer, but he looked a lot better, and they spent about ten minutes catching up even though Harry had been mirror-calling Remus a couple of times a week and Sirius had been over to visit several times.

Two of the other werewolves were with Remus, who they kept referring to as 'Dad' - something that made Remus roll his eyes but look quite pleased anyway – and when Harry asked what that made _Harry_ there were some confused frowns as everyone tried to work it out.

"…a dragon," Dean said eventually. "I think that's the only sensible answer."

"That'll do," said the really big werewolf – Harry couldn't actually remember his name, if it had ever been said while he was around, and it felt sort of awkward to ask. "We're doing Christmas shopping."

"Greyback said Christmas was a human invention and not worth celebrating," the sallow-cheeked witch added. "Which in hindsight was stupid, we're humans."

"Well, I'll come and enjoy it with you," Sirius suggested. "I'd ask if Harry and Dean here wanted to come along, but I think they'll be busy – that's why we're getting dress robes."

"Boxing day?" Harry suggested, then shook his head. "No, the Yule Ball might go on for ages. So maybe the day after that."

Everyone decided that that was at least worth thinking about, and then (and somewhat belatedly) Harry finally got to Madam Malkins.

She had a smile for him and said something about giving her lots of interesting challenges over the last few years, and then Harry spent about an hour with Madam Malkin trying to work out what would be a good colour for him and how to best reflect what he was like. They considered and rejected cloth-of-gold, bright blue and a deep burgundy red, while the attempt at using fuchsia only resulted in them all deciding that it was proof that Harry's-scales black didn't actually go with _everything_ after all.

Dean, being an arty sort, had come with sketches of what he thought would be good and was in and out in ten minutes. Then he started helping to pin down what Harry should wear, and finally they decided on something that was a lot like his normal robes only with a nice deep bottle-green colour to them.

It did feel like an awful lot of fuss as far as Harry was concerned, but at least he now had the dress robes he was after.

* * *

The next Monday, at breakfast, Neville got a letter.

It asked him to help someone sneak into the Yule Ball (the exact words it used were 'openly smuggle') and wasn't signed, but Luna came over two minutes later to see if Neville had decided to agree yet anyway. She said she was going to be doing a news piece on the Yule Ball and that for some reason nobody had got back to her about press access, so she thought she'd see if she could get an 'in' that way.

Harry suspected it was because he'd mentioned it at their club meeting a few days ago. Now that it had started, though, lots of those sorts of working-out-useful-setups began taking place, and it seemed like it had released a lot of pressure on people to get the asking right.

Or maybe it was that Luna had sort of pointed out that it didn't have to be _boys_ asking _girls_ but could be the other way around.

Whatever the reason, as the end of term approached it seemed like just about everyone was either taking a date to the ball or was taking someone to the ball who was interested in going to see what the ball was like (or in the case of some third years they were being taken by someone else's dates, and then planning on reshuffling once they were actually through the doors).

Harry did sort of wonder when the people who weren't going to be going to the Yule Ball would actually be eating. Normally the Christmas Feast was sort of the big moment in the middle of the Christmas Holiday, but the Yule Ball was going to be taking its place, and while most people who were staying at Hogwarts (and there were a _lot_ of people staying at Hogwarts) were going to be going to the Yule Ball there had to be _some_ people who were staying but who didn't plan on going to the Yule Ball.

Somewhere.

Ron hadn't said if he was going with anyone, though. And nor had Hermione, but they were the only two Harry could think of – Parvati Patil had asked Dean out to the ball that Saturday and Harry himself had ended up involved in letting Tanisis see what all the fuss was about. (It was hard for Harry to really call it a date, as they'd both been very clear what was going on.)

* * *

On Monday the nineteenth – the first day which properly felt like the Christmas Holiday, as it was the first day they _should_ have a lesson but didn't – Ginny came up to them in the common room.

Well, mostly she came up to Ron, Fred and George, as far as Harry could tell. The rest of them were sort of just incidentally there.

"I got it!" she said.

"Got what?" Fred asked. "Galloping Glumption?"

"That's not a real thing," Hermione sighed.

"Not yet it's not," George replied. "How does feeling really awful _only_ when you have an urgent appointment you forgot about sound?"

"Oi!" Ginny said. "I mean I got it. You know, the Animagus thing."

"Oh, you did?" Ron asked. "Cool. What are you?"

"Well..." she began, and frowned. "I don't _actually_ know, not for sure."

She put her hands on the table and demonstrated, showing the usual Animagus-style blur-of-change-which-didn't-look-instant-but-was, and then there was a sleek bird of prey standing on the floor.

A moment later there was another blur, and she was back to Ginny.

"Whoops," she added. "Still getting used to this."

"If you want to end up on the table you have to focus your transformation on your hands," Ron told her helpfully.

"Yes, _thank_ you," his sister muttered, then did another blur-transformation. This time she got the end location right, ending up as a sleek bird of prey standing on the _table_, and raised a wing to inspect it.

"Is that a falcon, an eagle, or what?" Neville asked. "I'm not very good with them."

"I _think_ she's a falcon," Hermione replied. "Where's that nature book?"

Harry went to get it, flipping through the pages on his way back down the stairs, then passed it to Hermione and she began looking through as well.

"I think… yes," she said, eventually. "The colour of the head feathers is wrong but that's got to be her Animagus tell. She's a peregrine falcon."

"Aren't they the fastest birds in the world?" Dean asked. "Except for ones like phoenixes and stuff which are magic."

There were three more transformation blurs in quick succession. Ginny turned back to human and found herself standing on the table, said 'bugger', changed back to falcon and then back to human but this time she was on the floor properly.

"Language!" Ron said.

Everyone looked at him.

"What?" he asked. "Everyone does it when I say something like that."

* * *

On Christmas Day itself, Harry made sure to sleep in as much as possible in case the Yule Ball went on very late.

That didn't actually mean he got much extra sleep – everyone started opening their presents as soon as they woke up, and that roused Harry – but that was fine, because at least he'd not got up earlier than anyone else had. Some of the presents were real surprises, as well, and Harry was particularly pleased by a penknife from Sirius with all sorts of bizarre magical attachments.

He was sort of aware that Muggle penknives, or Swiss Army knives (even though they seemed like an odd sort of weapon for the Swiss Army) could have a lot of attachments, but when you could tease out one of the bits of metal and unfold it into a chair that was the sort of thing that only a magical one could do.

And the telescope attachment was helpful as well.

It was an odd Christmas in general, though, because it was a Christmas where the whole of the feeling of it was that it was the lead-up to the Yule Ball. Christmas Lunch was still very nice, but people kept reminding one another not to have too much or they'd be too full at the Yule Ball.

Professor Dumbledore reminded everyone that the Yule Ball was that evening, and that if you turned up for it next evening you would be sadly disappointed. He also said that if you turned up for it last evening then he hoped you didn't feel too embarrassed.

Outside, everyone had fun in the snow for hours – Ginny in particular seemed to be spending almost as much time transformed as human, getting used to being able to fly, and Harry couldn't really blame her.

Flying was pretty good.

* * *

About three in the afternoon things got a lot more chaotic as Nora plus Olly, Sally and Gary arrived, and a confused snowball fight developed where Harry was never entirely sure what was going on except that snowballs seemed to be everywhere at once.

It seemed an awful lot like the three dragonets were working together, with Sally distracting people by flying at them before Olly and Gary dropped big snowballs on them – snowballs which Hagrid was making but which kept being stolen by dragons before they could actually be thrown – and Harry wasn't sure if that was what you'd expect from a normal dragon of that age or not.

He was well aware that he wasn't anything like being a 'normal' dragon, but he was also well aware that he hadn't ever been a dragon of that age. Though admittedly it was sometimes hard to remember that.

The girls started to vanish about four thirty, three and a half hours before the start of the Ball. Harry was aware that it was something to do with how long it took girls to get ready, and at first he wondered what they could be doing for three and a half hours before realizing that it was probably something to do with how they'd be helping each other. So each individual person wasn't having all that time spent on them, but was using a lot of it to help the others do their prep work.

That was Harry's guess, anyway.

Then he asked Hermione, just to make sure, and she gave him an odd look.

"No?" she said. "It's because it's getting really dark. We won't be able to see anything soon, sunset was nearly an hour ago."

Harry had to admit that that was a good point – he could still see sort of okay but humans had bad eyesight – and over the next ten or twenty minutes just about everyone else went inside.

As for Harry himself, he was last of all, but that was because he'd helped Nora and Hagrid carry three now-snoozing dragonets back to where they were going to be spending the night.

"They will probably play later," Nora said, thinking about it. "They're just tired for now."

"Yes," Hagrid agreed, speaking in Dragonish as well. "They like snow."

"They're right!" Nora said sagely. "Snow is good."

* * *

One thing that Harry could certainly say about putting on dress robes as a boy (or a male, if that was the difference) was that it was a lot quicker.

Girls had to do their hair, and make sure that everything was just right, but for someone like Dean or Neville or Harry all you _really_ had to do was make sure your robes weren't too creased.

And perhaps comb your (much shorter) hair, if you had it.

Then everyone who was going with someone else in Gryffindor started meeting up in the common room, ready to head downstairs, and everyone who _wasn't_ going with someone else in Gryffindor tried to remember where they said they'd meet the person they were going to the ball with. That led to Harry getting slightly worried about whether he'd remembered right, and after worrying for a bit he sent Ruth off with a message to Tanisis to the effect that he was going to be waiting near the top of the grand staircase.

Unfortunately for Harry, that got noticed, and for the next few minutes he was sending off Patronuses with messages for various other people who couldn't remember their prepared meeting-up point. It was nice to be able to help, but Harry did sort of feel a bit put-upon, and he was still wondering who exactly Ron was going to be going with.

As it turned out, though, Ron's partner for the Ball was quite eye-catching.

In hindsight, Harry should have realized that it had to be Hermione, and he _had_ heard her talking about colouring her feathers. But the way Hermione looked as Clever Girl was something else entirely, with a gradient from green to iridescent blue running from her head to her long tail – and with a kind of light-and-dark ripple as well, so it looked like every third row of feathers was much paler than the rest.

"What do you think?" Sally-Anne asked, as Hermione did a twirl – after making sure there was nobody close enough to get knocked over by her tail, of course. "We spent ages working on it!"

"_After_ making sure that it wouldn't wear off if she transformed back," Lavender Brown added. "Hermione reminded us about that. Twice."

"Wicked," Ron summarized.

"I think that might be a slightly offensive thing to say about a witch, mate," Neville joked.

* * *

Because a quarter of the school was in Gryffindor and another quarter was in Ravenclaw, almost a sixth of the total pairs of Ball attendees who weren't going with people in their own house were meeting up on the seventh floor landing outside the doors to the two common rooms.

Combined with all the groups of people who _were_ going with people in their own houses, it meant that Harry got to see quite a lot of Wizarding dress robe fashion all at once over the next five or ten minutes. Very occasionally there was someone who seemingly hadn't made much of an effort, like one Sixth-Year boy who just seemed to have put glitter on his robes, but then again Harry was no good at fashion (and it did look shiny, so there was that) but more often it was quite impressive.

Luna's dress in particular was something that was simply impossible for any Muggle designer to make – or at any rate any Muggle designer not allowed to use large numbers of nearly-invisible wires – because it had a two-layered skirt, thin silky white over a thick and quite eye-catching purple, and the outer layer was tethered around the edge with twenty-four floating dirigible plums to give it a thoroughly gravity-defying image.

It didn't exactly _coordinate_ with Neville's outfit, but it didn't seem to clash either. Though after the World Cup Harry was a little less sure that wizards understood that colours clashing was actually a bad thing.

Maybe it wasn't?

"Any idea where Ginny is?" Ron asked. "I asked Hermione but she hasn't said anything."

Hermione rolled her eyes, and Harry looked askance at Ron for a moment before realizing he was grinning.

"Well, she'll turn up," the Weasley added. "At some point, anyway."

The flow of students exiting Ravenclaw Tower was slowing down, now, and Harry was finally able to satisfy his curiosity about how Tanisis would end up dressing up for the ball.

The answer was _sort_ of like the way Egyptians were dressed in history books, the sort of stereotypical way, but it wasn't _quite_ like that. Tanisis had a headdress on that draped down both sides of her head, but there wasn't any of the really obvious eye makeup that Harry thought was called kohl.

Then she had a dress that was made to be a bit like a network – it reminded Harry of a string vest except that all the strands were covered with tube-shaped beads and there were circular beads on the junctions – that went from her shoulders to her waist. It looked like it must have taken a long time to get on, unless magic was involved, but magic _was_ involved so that was probably what was going on.

"I asked my parents what would be a good outfit to wear," Tanisis explained, raising a paw and showing the bangle around it – one of a set of four, Harry noticed, one just above each foot. "Apparently this is an old design."

"It's certainly going to be unusual," Harry said. "And eye catching, with all the beads."

He shrugged a bit. "It's more effort than I went to."

"I think that's how it's meant to work," Su Li contributed. "Girls have to spend hours and hours but get to be really excited, boys get to spend about ten minutes but have to be nervous."

People were heading down the stairs, now, and Harry noticed in a slightly interested sort of way that Su was heading down the stairs along with Sally-Anne Perks. For a moment he wondered if their dates were going to be in Hufflepuff or Slytherin, then he thought about it a bit more and realized that that didn't have to be the case.

Nothing about the rules for the Yule Ball had said you had to have a boy going with a girl, after all.

* * *

When they reached the ground floor, everyone had to start lining up outside so they could go through the doors into the Great Hall in a line. Harry didn't mind, but he imagined that quite a lot of other students would be getting quite cold – _Tanisis_ might be quite cold with what she was wearing – and he was about to ask until some of the older students started quietly offering Warming Charms.

Somehow it seemed like there were more students queueing to get into the Yule Ball than there normally were in the whole castle, because of all the different-coloured outfits and the way everyone _was_ in a line instead of going back and forth a bit at a time.

Harry could see Draco, who looked sort of a bit like a vicar in his dress robes, and then a bit further along there was James from the dungeons and dragons club who was accompanied by one of the Beauxbatons girls. He also happened to catch sight of June, who appeared to have braided her fur, and who was shifting her weight a little in her place in line alongside someone who Harry assumed was from Durmstrang.

"I wonder what's causing all the delay?" Dean said, _sotto voce_. (Harry liked to think of it as _sotto voce_, which sounded much more intricate than _quietly._) "Any ideas?"

"I think maybe they didn't expect this many of us," Tanisis suggested, turning and rising onto her hind legs for a moment to see just how far the queue extended behind them. "It's going to take us five minutes just to all get in once they open the doors properly."

Her paws crunched back down onto the packed snow, and she checked for a moment to make sure she hadn't splashed anyone. Fortunately everyone's outfits were fine, and she stretched in a feline manner – which was entirely understandable. "Maybe ten."

"Blimey, I hope Fred and George are somewhere near the front," Ron added, in the same tone as the rest of them, though presumably a lot of people had noticed when Tanisis reared up. "If they're bored for long enough the Ball could end up sort of more exciting than it's meant to be."

At that point, fortunately, there was a ripple of movement at the front of the line. Harry could mostly tell because Hagrid and Madame Maxime seemed to be among the first to enter, and you could see Hagrid moving from a mile off.

Actually Harry could see Hagrid from several miles off in the right conditions, but for most people it was closer to one.

* * *

As far as Harry could tell, neither Fred nor George actually did get bored.

He based this conclusion on the lack of explosions.

The Great Hall, when he actually reached it, had been significantly redesigned. Instead of the four long tables for the four Houses that normally filled the space and the slightly smaller High Table, there were dozens of smaller twelve-seater round tables in a kind of double layer around the edge of the Hall.

The floating candles had gone as well, and lanterns had taken their place – bobbing up and down over each of the tables – which had a surprising effect on how the Hall looked, it even seemed to look bigger.

Then Harry looked again and realized it _was_ bigger. A bit, anyway.

"Maybe they weren't expecting _quite_ this many people," June guessed, in front of him.

The Champions and their dates – Cedric with Cho Chang, Fleur with Roger Davies, and Krum with someone Harry had never met before – took places up at a table along with some of the Triwizard judges (though not all of them, because having both Madam Maxime and Hagrid at the same table with ten other people would strain the amount of space people had), and Harry looked around for a moment before spotting a nearby table that was still about half-empty.

There was a menu, with about half-a-dozen options for each course, and Harry looked through it in interest.

"What do you think would be nice?" Tanisis asked.

"Well, I could have any of these," Harry replied. "Or the menu. Sometimes paper can be quite tasty."

The sphinx sniggered, caught by surprise, then nodded to June as she took her own place at the same table. Neville had come over as well, along with Luna, but the rest of Harry's friends were elsewhere.

He supposed that was how it was supposed to work, though, so said hello to June's Durmstrang date.

At that point, though, something caught his eye.

"Hey, Tanisis?" he asked, nodding. "Is it me or is that Tyler?"

"Where?" Tanisis asked, craning her neck a little – she was sitting on the chair in a quite feline way, so she had more height than most – then saw where Harry was pointing. "I think you're right."

Harry realized that, in hindsight, it made an awful lot of sense that Tyler would bring Ginny. It was just like him to try and slip past the rules, and with how many third- and second- and even a few first-years there were here already it would be a lot of work for the teachers to actually tell when someone _didn't_ have a proper date (or 'date') to get them in.

And it looked like the teachers were mostly trying to enjoy themselves just as much as the students right now, so nobody was bothering to check.

* * *

It was another few minutes before everyone was seated, and Professor Dumbledore tapped his glass with a fork before rising.

"Please allow me to welcome you all to the Yule Ball," he said. "I would like to say a few words."

He lifted up the menu from next to his plate, opened it, examined it carefully, and then sat down again.

"Pork chops with mash," he said, and pork chops with mash duly appeared on his plate. "Thank you. Please feel free to begin eating."

"Is he always like that?" June's date asked, with an accent Harry couldn't quite place, as everyone began looking through their menus again.

"Salmon en croute," decided the warg herself. "And yes, I think he always is. Sometimes he's even sillier."

She took out her wand and tapped her knife. _"Mobilis."_

Harry watched, interested, as the knife rose a little way into the air before starting to cut the newly-arrived pastry up into pieces.

Tanisis started doing much the same thing after her own choice (of pork chops) appeared, and for a moment Harry wondered if that was what qualified as 'best behaviour' for quadruped table manners.

Then he ordered himself some risotto, because it sounded tasty.

* * *

"It is sort of strange here," the Durmstrang boy said, most of an hour later.

He'd said his name was Alexander, but then a bit later he'd mentioned an anecdote where he was called Sasha, and it sounded like Sasha was a nickname but it was a funny sort of nickname for someone called Alexander.

Maybe it was spelled Aleksander, like he'd seen in a book once?

"Durmstrang has a lot of space, so it sprawls out," he added. "Here everything is in the same very tall building. But that also means we have much bigger grounds, we can go a lot further before we might meet Muggles."

"Britain is sort of crowded," June agreed. "But this is a very empty bit of Britain, as bits of Britain go."

"You know that the British Ministry of Magic once made a law that nobody could play Quidditch within two hundred miles of a Muggle town?" Harry asked. "I don't think they really know how far a mile was."

"I think we could actually do that," Alexander mused.

"Where _are_ you located?" Tanisis said, then. "Sorry if that's rude, but – you know where Hogwarts is?"

"Well, mostly," he said. "We get in the ship, the ship goes through the whirlpool, and tada, we are at Hogwarts. But it must be Scotland, even if the days here in midwinter are longer than the days at Durmstrang."

"But Viktor Krum is Bulgarian," Harry frowned, then took another mouthful of risotto. He waited until he'd finished it, making sure all his thoughts were in order and stuff, then continued. "And Bulgaria's surprisingly far south compared to Britain."

"How far south is it compared to Britain?" June asked.

"It's down near Greece," Harry replied. "We're further north than Edinburgh, and Edinburgh is about the same as Moscow."

"That is surprising," Neville agreed. "You really delivered there."

"Is it some kind of secret?" Harry added. "That you don't even want other wizards to know?"

"Well, the headmaster, he says so," Alexander replied, spreading his hands. "But I think it is just so that you do not work out that Durmstrang is a fleet of ships."

"A fleet of ships?" June repeated, baffled. "But… how would that work?"

"The history books always say that Durmstrang is a castle," Tanisis said.

"Silly." Luna shook her head. "Haven't you ever heard of a forecastle?"

"That's just a joke," Alexander added, chuckling faintly.

Harry had to admit, it was a really good trick.

Now he wasn't sure if it was a joke or if saying it was a joke was the joke. He might have _said_ where (or what) Durmstrang actually was, and they still wouldn't know.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Interestingly, this particular chapter has subsidiary material.

If you want to know what Harry _might_ have discussed with the publican, a possible conversation can be found in the fic Sunset's Isekai – specifically chapter 33, _Weyr Drinks_.


	61. Dances With Quadrupeds

After everyone had finished their meals – first the main course and then the dessert, which for Harry was a nice sundae – Dumbledore asked them all to please stay seated and hold on tightly.

He swept his wand across, sending them all – and their tables and chairs – soaring across the room to line the walls, and cleared out a big dance space.

"Excellent," he said with a smile. "I trust everybody is able to extricate themselves? If not, please raise your wand and call for assistance."

No flashes of sparks resulted, and the band – one which Harry had sometimes heard on the Wizarding Wireless, before he mostly switched to Radio Three for music to listen to – tested out their instruments before starting to play.

The Champions were first out onto the floor, and it was sort of interesting to see the difference between them. Cedric's date was Cho Chang, who was technically a Quidditch rival, but they seemed to be getting on well enough and they were both actually quite good at dancing.

Harry didn't really know how much Fleur's date meant to her, or the other way around, but it seemed like he was paying a lot of attention to her. That was probably the point, or something; meanwhile about the only thing he could tell about the girl who Krum had come with was that she seemed to be trying not to grin.

Something was very entertaining to her and Harry wasn't sure what.

"I've suddenly realized that I have no idea how to dance," Tanisis admitted, as some of the other pairs began to drift out onto the dance floor – which, now Harry was looking, seemed a bit bigger than the whole Great Hall normally was.

"I'm not surprised," George supplied, as his twin took to the dance floor with Angelina in a take-no-prisoners way that made Harry wonder if they knew the Stick And Bucket Dance.

"Why not?" the sphinx replied, looking up at him and tilting her head a bit.

"Well, you _do_ have two left paws," George said.

"I'd be more angry about that, but I'm probably going to use it for a riddle at some point," Tanisis informed him. "I wonder if I could rhyme 'dance' with 'France'."

Luna drifted serenely past doing one half of a waltz, and Harry did a double-take as he spotted that her partner was Neville (which he'd expected) in panther form (which he hadn't).

_I don't know how this happened_, Neville mouthed (or something like that, Harry was fairly good at muzzle-reading after so many Unusually Shaped meetings but he wasn't the best) and then they were gliding off into the middle of the dance floor.

"Does that sort of thing happen here all the time?" Alexander asked.

"Honestly, that was a new one," June replied.

"Perhaps we should try it?" he suggested. "It seems to work."

"And it would mean only one left paw on the ground," George added, then quickly got out of range.

* * *

Harry only went out for two dances with Tanisis, and over the course of them they both discovered quite comprehensively that it was probably best to try when there weren't many other people on the dance floor. It did mean that you got more attention paid to you, which was a bit embarrassing and led to Harry feeling slightly nervous, but it did also make it less likely that someone would get thumped with a tail or a wing or nearly knocked over by a flank.

It also left Harry fairly sure that he should have asked Conal for advice, as it seemed likely that the centaurs would have some idea how quadrupeds danced. Somehow it had never come up during the Unusually Shaped meetings.

They did seem to be about the only people who were having that sort of trouble, though some of Harry's other friends were discovering new and interesting _kinds_ of trouble dancing to have. Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail were cheerfully demonstrating how few dances allowed for one body to have two dates and one person going stag (though not in the same way as Prongs) while Tiobald demonstrated he could spin his wheelchair around at tremendous speed and cleared half the floor in a matter of moments.

Then there was what Ron and Hermione had somehow ended up doing. It involved a few twirls, a switch by Hermione to her raptor-form (which meant Hermione had to be careful of the length of her tail) and then Hermione throwing Ron up in the air as high as possible. He switched to Nutkin just before she started to throw, which gave him a lot more height and momentum, then once she caught him he changed back so he was standing on the ground again.

Harry saw them try it at least a dozen times, and it only went completely smoothly once – the first time – while every other time _something_ went wrong and either they ended up on the ground in a heap or Ron didn't get caught and landed as a squirrel (though in the latter case he was fine, because squirrels didn't exactly fall very hard).

By contrast to all of that (and to Dean, who seemed to be enjoying himself but scared of making a mistake) it seemed like Draco in particular was dancing like he was actually used to dancing.

Harry immediately decided that one of the things they did in the Slytherin Common Room was to practice dancing.

* * *

Harry had a chat with Percy for a few minutes, where he was asked how the dragonets were getting on and was able to report that they all seemed nice and social. Harry hadn't exactly seen how _wild_ young dragons acted, but his copy of Fantastic Beasts talked about how dangerous they were even young and Gary, Sally and Ollie were nothing like that.

June happened to be nearby, and she said that if Nora was attending the ball then she'd be quite dangerous if she tried to dance – not deliberately, just because they'd all seen how much disruption wings and tails could cause – and Harry had to agree that that was a good point.

Perhaps dragon social events should be held outside. That way they could fly.

Percy then mentioned that there'd been someone trying to smuggle flying carpets into the country, and Harry had to ask why. Surely nobody could use a flying carpet in public anyway, and in private it wouldn't be much use because you couldn't go very far.

"It's so they can say they can, you see," Percy told him. "There's a certain cachet to having a flying carpet in your house simply _because_ they're banned – it's a way of showing off."

He sniffed. "I think there are much better _legal_ ways of showing off – like what my sister's been doing, for example."

Harry glanced over in the direction Percy was looking, and noticed that either Dean and Ginny were now dancing in Animagus form or Dean had made an ill-advised comment without remembering he no longer had a way of getting away from everybody else.

"Does it count as legal?" he asked. "I don't think she's registered yet."

"One month grace period," Percy said promptly. "As pursuant to the Animagus Registration Act. A known Animagus who has not registered within the one month grace period is in trouble, of course."

"You know all the rules, don't you?" Fred asked, sliding into a seat next to Percy. "Why do you bother?"

"Fred, I know full well that _you_ know all the rules," Percy told him, smiling slightly. "There is no way you could _possibly_ have broken that many school rules if you were just doing whatever was fun."

"...he's got me there," Fred admitted to Angelina.

"No way to weasel out of it?" Angelina enquired.

"This is why I asked you to the ball," Fred declared.

* * *

As the evening passed, some of the Yule Ball attendees began to head outside.

There was a nice rose garden set up – one of those things that Harry was fairly sure you could only do with magic, to grow a rose garden in the middle of the Scottish winter on demand – and even though it was quite cold some people still seemed to like the idea of heading out there to talk quietly. (Or, presumably, to do things that didn't involve any talking at all, like kissing. Harry had never done kissing before, but he was fairly sure that it would sort of keep your mouth occupied.)

"I don't even remember seeing some of these statues," June said, looking at a reindeer. "I wonder if it's new?"

"In the Muggle world then making a statue like this would take a while," Harry told her. "But with magic then maybe it can just be transfigured into shape."

"Or they petrified an actual reindeer," Tanisis mused. "I suppose that wouldn't be fair on the reindeer, though."

Alexander gave Harry a bit of an odd look. "How do you know that about Muggles?" he asked. "I did not know that about Muggles. Do you do, I know Hogwarts has a course… Muggle Studies?"

"No, though some of my friends do," Harry replied.

"I do that course, it's interesting," Tanisis said. "But I know the answer to that one. It's because Harry grew up with Muggles."

The Durmstrang boy blinked. "How?"

Harry did his best to explain.

It didn't seem to clarify things much.

* * *

Harry decided that there had to be some kind of large warming charm on the rose garden area.

It wasn't something he would have noticed if he wasn't thinking about it, because he was quite tolerant of big temperature differences, but after the fourth time Harry saw someone unperturbed by sitting outside on stone benches dusted with snow despite wearing not-very-thick dress robes he realized that it wasn't as cold as he'd have expected.

The way the snow wasn't melting was particularly impressive.

"I wonder if it's hard to cast," he said, explaining his train of thought, but then someone else said something nearby that caught his attention.

"Doesn't it seem suspicious to you?"

The voice sounded like one of the Slytherin upper-years, Harry thought, and he tilted his head to hear better.

"Suspicious?" replied someone who Harry was fairly sure was also a Slytherin sixth-year. "What are you on about?"

"All those non humans," the first one explained – _Pucey_, that was his name. Adrian Pucey. "Gryffindor's got a dragon and a three headed dog. Hufflepuff's got a wolf and a centaur. Ravenclaw's got a sphinx and a selkie. Slytherin hasn't got any."

"...are you _actually_ thick, or do you just play one at Christmas?" asked the other boy, who Harry remembered was Warrington something (or possibly something Warrington).

"Shove off," Pucey snorted. "It can't be a coincidence."

"First, um, yes it can? Who's doing Arithmancy here, me or you?" Warrington asked. "It's like, um, you're talking about rolling a load of dice and none of them being ones, but if that happens you don't think the dice must not _have_ any ones."

Harry felt sort of awkward by this point, and didn't want to interrupt. It looked like Tanisis was the same, though she was also trying quite hard not to giggle.

"But still," Pucey said. "Where's the whole House Equality thing?"

"Second," Warrington went on. "You know how Salazar was sort of famous for not wanting any of the-"

He paused, then, before continuing in a quieter voice that Harry could still hear. "-the _Muggle_ sort in his House? Would you be surprised if students who weren't even human were a bit reluctant to join his House?"

"But it's nothing to do with that," Pucey protested. "_Some_ of them are dreadful, of course, but I wouldn't mind one of them who can pass for human."

There was a long sigh at that point, and Harry wanted to look to see if Warrington was rubbing his temples with his thumb and finger or something.

It sounded sort of like that was going on.

"At this point I'm not even going to tell you," he said. "I'll just tell Taira and Anna and they can educate you if they want."

"What do they have to do with anything?" Pucey asked, sounding deeply confused.

* * *

"I was very impressed," Madam Maxime was saying, as Harry (and Tanisis, who – as she put it – was going to see what else happened tonight around Harry) rounded the corner.

She and Hagrid were sat on what looked like the largest stone bench in the entire rose garden, which still managed to look a bit small. Nora was there as well, curled up in a large pool of drowsing dragon in front of the bench, and Maxime was absently scratching the dragoness's neck.

"She's a smart girl," Hagrid agreed, smiling down at Nora.

"More than merely smart, for a Ridgeback, I believe," Maxime said. "We have seen dragons in our creature courses, of course, but – oh, ah, Mr. Potter?"

"Harry's fine, Headmistress," Harry assured her. "And this is Tanisis."

"Charmed," Maxime told her. "I hope you are enjoying the ball?"

"It's turned out there aren't really many dances for people with four legs," Harry said. "I think the main thing we've learned is to practice first."

"Practice, perhaps," Maxime agreed. "I think practicing afterwards might be pleasant as well."

She directed those last words at Hagrid, who didn't quite seem to get it – if there was an _it_ to be got, that was.

Harry wasn't an expert.

"Harry was part of it," the big man said. "He helped sort out the whole thing with Nora, an' I got to help raise her… an' then months later it turned out she could talk! Harry was the only one who could understand her at first, of course."

"Yes, I saw him helping with the Task," Maxime agreed. "I never would have thought something with dragons could be so… safe."

"Oh, well, I've always liked them," Hagrid said, a bit nervously. "Dangerous creatures, I mean – or, well, those ones others say are dangerous. Always felt like I could relate, you know, what with being half-giant an' all."

Nora yawned, wings flexing a bit, and looked up at Hagrid. "Can she scratch under my left wing? It itches there."

"Let's have a look," Hagrid said, and Nora raised her wing. "Hmm. Yep, scales look fine, so must just be an itch."

He pointed out the area, and Maxime moved her hand to scratch there instead. Nora rumbled approval, tail flicking slightly, and Harry noticed that the Beauxbatons headmistress seemed to be lost in thought.

Or maybe she just thought Nora was cute. It could be that.

* * *

Back inside, and with the hands of the clock well past eleven PM, Harry found that the dance floor had emptied out a bit.

Most of the people he recognized were either gone entirely or sitting around the sides of the room, just relaxing and enjoying the music, and it seemed like people were going up when they felt like it rather than trying to wring every last dance out of the time.

Most of his close friends were clustered in a corner, Hermione having changed back from her dinosaur form into something more capable of speech, and Harry made his way over to join them.

"I'm going to see if Christopher managed to sneak in," Tanisis told him. "If that's okay?"

"Go ahead," Harry agreed, remembering that Christopher was a Slytherin third-year she knew. "I'm not going to stop you."

Neville slid out a chair as Harry got closer, and the dragon gratefully used it to clamber up so his neck and shoulders were above the level of the table.

"Had fun so far?" Ron asked.

"It's been interesting," Harry said, nodding. "I don't think I'd normally have spent this much time in a row talking to people. Well… new people."

"Grandmother told me once that that was half the point of this sort of thing," Neville supplied. "The other half of the point is just that it's a nice way to enjoy yourself."

"It's _a_ way to enjoy yourself," Hermione said. "I can think of other ways to enjoy myself, but I suppose so."

"It's also a chance to show off," Fred pointed out.

"I think that counts as enjoying yourself, as far as Gran's concerned," Neville chuckled.

"By the way, you know this band?" Dean asked. "What are they like compared to other bands?"

"Other bands?" Ron asked. "What, you mean like that Variety Magical lot from Spain? They're all right, but I'm not sure about their guitar stuff."

"No, other British bands," Dean began, then shook his head. "Right, forgot. There just aren't many wizards."

"There's a few," Neville told him. "There's a parlour music group called The Secret Of Chamber Music, we had them over for my birthday once, and I think there used to be some dwarves who were pretty good but they broke up over creative differences."

"It's still weird for there to be only a few music acts in a country," Dean said, then shrugged. "Whatever."

"To me the weirdest thing is that that means most people in the country like the same music," Harry said. "Even on Pern they don't all like the same music, really, there's lots of styles at the Harper Hall. And Menolly's parents don't think her music's worth anything."

"They do when they don't know it's hers, right?" Ginny asked. "I can't remember exactly how that goes."

"Yeah, I think you're right," Harry admitted. "But they don't have much time for music in general anyway."

He had to admit that if all music at Hogwarts was like his first experience of it, _he_ wouldn't have much time for music by this point.

* * *

"Hey, Harry, can we get your help with something?" George asked, ten or twenty minutes later.

Harry wasn't doing anything in particular – just listening to the music and watching in an idle sort of way as dancers took another turn around the dance floor – so he dropped down from his chair and moved over to join Fred and George.

"See, we're trying to work out if Percy snuck Penelope Clearwater back onto the Hogwarts grounds," Fred explained, spreading out the corners of a very familiar map. "But they could, frankly, be anywhere."

"And they could be anywhere even if they're not frankly," George contributed.

"Exactly," Fred nodded.

"Why would Percy need to sneak her back onto the grounds?" Harry asked. "She's not a student any more, sure, but she's an adult now. They could meet up… pretty much whenever."

"That might be true," George agreed. "But we don't have a magic map of pretty much whenever."

"Pretty much wherever," Fred corrected.

"Pretty much wherever," George agreed. "Which is where we don't have a map of. We do have a zoomed out map of Hogwarts, though, and you've got good eyesight – can you see her anywhere?"

Harry was about to start scanning over the Marauders' Map, but then he remembered something and gave both twins a suspicious look. "Wait… wasn't that in my hoard?"

"The map your father helped to make?" Fred asked.

"The map which we passed down to you?" George checked.

"It's still there," Fred said quickly. "This is a new one, we got it for Christmas."

Harry noticed he was smouldering faintly, and did his best to stop. It wasn't polite, even if he'd thought that they'd taken something from his hoard without asking.

"Padfoot gave it to us," George explained. "He said it would level the playing field."

"We're not sure what he meant," Fred added. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that he also _un_levelled the playing field."

After about two years of knowing his Dogfather, Harry had to admit that that was exactly the sort of thing he'd do.

The Smiths had probably been pretty happy this morning.

"You don't think that means that the Smiths are doing a prank now that they know where you are?" he asked.

"Well, we _suspect_ they know where we are," George corrected. "But more importantly, they might hypothetically know where we are if they're hypothetically looking at a hypothetical map but more importantly we know where they really are by really looking at this real map."

"And Anna's been with Viktor Krum all evening," Fred told him. "Not sure how she pulled that off."

"That's what makes them worthy rivals, of course," George said.

"I think that's if they don't know how you do some of your pranks and you don't know how they do some of their pranks," Harry mused.

"Oh, we're pretty sure they haven't figured out who to blame for some of those pranks," Fred nodded. "Because they haven't got revenge for one yet. It was great, we made it look like it was too _simple _for us to have bothered with – just some dungbombs. We blamed it on Rawlings."

Harry spotted something on the map, sniffed, and smirked slightly. "I think they _have_ figured it out."

"What?" George asked, sliding the map around to face him and making it focus in on Gryffindor Tower. "Are they in the common room?"

There was a sort of _chuff_ sound down by his foot, and then a very self-satisfied fox darted off into the forest of table legs around the side of the Great Hall.

"Well… bugger," Fred decided.

"We'd better start preparing our retaliation for their retaliation," George mused, as Fred blanked the Marauders' Map. "Nice talking with you, Harry, but I think we're going to want to be behind the Fat Lady for the next day or so."

* * *

It was about ten minutes after midnight when the Ball finally ended, though all that really meant was that the music had stopped. Professor Dumbledore thanked them all for coming along and enjoying themselves and said he was quite glad to be hosting such a well-attended event, and then people started to head upstairs (or downstairs, or outside) to go to bed.

As far as Harry could tell from checking _his_ copy of the Marauder's Map, though – which he did as soon as he got upstairs, just to be sure it was still there – at least thirty people hadn't actually gone to bed yet and were still scattered around the school.

Maybe the curfew rules were sort of relaxed… or it just wasn't possible to enforce them tonight?

Either way, Harry said good night to everyone, then went back into his tent to get changed and check in on Empress. She was glad to hear from him, if a bit busy, so Harry just said hello before lying down and dropping off to sleep.

It had been an interesting day.

* * *

On Boxing Day, Harry and Sirius had Remus over to visit at Grimmauld Place.

As a result of the recent changes in Remus' situation, 'having Remus over to visit' became a sort of all-day thing where two floors of Sirius' townhouse seemed to be almost entirely full of werewolf.

Harry was sort of reminded of the Yule Ball, in a way, because there was a chance to talk to various people who'd had very different lives and see how their experiences were different from his experiences. Hearing how different Remus' impromptu pack was from Fenrir Greyback's one was kind of shocking, and about halfway through the afternoon Harry realized in a sort of guilty way that he felt glad that Fenrir had attacked Remus.

It wasn't because Remus had been hurt, of course – Remus still had some scars, and apparently they'd never go away, and Harry would have really preferred it if Remus hadn't been hurt at all – but it was because not only would Fenrir never be able to do that to anyone else but Remus had managed to sort of rescue everyone he'd already done it to.

Harry got a chance to ask Remus about that a bit later, while there was a board game going on involving a sort of octagonal board and lots of coloured pieces you had to connect up together, and after thinking about it a bit Remus nodded slightly.

"I know what you mean, Harry," he said, as the sallow-cheeked werewolf woman (who Harry had finally been introduced to as Emily) considered for a bit before rotating one of the yellow pieces already on the board. "I've not really talked about it to anyone, but I felt the same sort of thing after – after James died."

Harry wasn't really sure what to say, so he just nodded.

He could _understand_ what Remus meant, it was just… a bit of a tough topic to think about.

"Ha!" crowed another of the werewolves, Martin (who was the youngest person there apart from Harry). "Got you!"

He put down a red piece, and traced an unbroken path across the board with his finger. Emily swore, and shook her head for a bit before sighing. "Another game?"

"Sure," Martin agreed, turning the board upside down and tipping all the pieces off. "Same colours?"

* * *

Harry had a meeting with Dumbledore over Christmas, as well, in which Dumbledore said that he had sadly gained no more news on the Horcruxes.

"They do say that no news is good news," Dumbledore smiled. "But in this case, I fear that no news is simply no news, and it will remain so at least until we can locate the Cup of Helga Hufflepuff."

"And the Sword of Gryffindor and the Diadem of Ravenclaw?" Harry asked, to show he was keeping track.

"Perhaps, though we do not know if Tom had access to either," Dumbledore agreed. "I also wonder whether perhaps Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff had something else each, as we do know that Slytherin and Gryffindor had two things."

He spread his hands expansively.

Behind him, Fawkes burst into flame, but Harry had been sort of expecting that because the phoenix had looked in quite poor shape.

"Wouldn't they have a lot more than two things?" Harry said. "I know I've got a lot more than two things."

"True indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "But there is the conundrum, you see. The Cup of Helga Hufflepuff was famous, and to some extent so was the Locket of Salazar Slytherin, but – to use an example I pluck from thin air – the Biro of Rowena Ravenclaw would simply be quite ordinary and not famous at all."

"I thought biros were invented a lot more recently than that, Professor," Harry said, tilting his head.

"Ah!" Dumbledore smiled. "A good point. Perhaps the Biro of Rowena Ravenclaw would be remarkable indeed."

Harry tried not to snigger, but it was quite hard.

"Now," Dumbledore went on. "I was wondering if you would be interested in helping with another of the Tasks of the Triwizard Tournament, if you are able."

"I don't know what the second Task is, Professor," Harry pointed out, quite reasonably he thought. "So I don't know if I'm able."

"A fine observation," Dumbledore told him. "You are making quite a habit of them today, Harry. Alas, I do not wish to give away the whole of the surprise, but I can tell you that it would be quite helpful if you were tremendously good at swimming."

"I've done some swimming at primary school," Harry said, thinking about it. "It didn't go very well. I thought I just wasn't good at swimming, but maybe it's because they were teaching how to swim for humans and dragons need to do things a bit differently."

"I would not be surprised if that were the case," the headmaster told him. "Well, let us see if your swimming improves over the course of the next couple of months. You are, of course, under no obligation to help."

Harry wasn't sure about if he'd be trying to get better at swimming so he _could_ help, or not, but getting better at swimming so he was better at swimming sounded like a good idea.

It certainly seemed to work out for Path and the others in _The Dolphins of Pern_.

* * *

"Hmm..." Ron mumbled under his breath. "If I'm going to try and make a rocket which has unlimited fuel, it's probably good to make it a not very dangerous fuel, right?"

"That sounds like a good idea to me," Neville agreed. "Unlimited amounts of something dangerous sounds… dangerous."

"Yes, that's how transitive properties work," Hermione said.

"What?" Neville asked, rummaging for his Remembrall. "Is that one of the laws of Transfiguration I forgot about?"

"No, it's a maths thing," Hermione replied. "Forget it."

Neville had his Remembrall out by now, and he gave it a look. "They should make a version of this called a Forgetful," he said. "It'd tell you if what you were trying to remember was actually important."

"Anyway, dangerous stuff," Ron resumed. "And honestly it kind of looks like hydrogen peroxide might be good, because it basically turns into water and oxygen. Those aren't dangerous – well, unless it's boiling water, you're drowning in it, or for the oxygen if you're on fire."

"I think all three of those things are a problem with _any_ rocket fuel, aren't they?" Harry asked. "Well, except solid rocket fuel. I don't think you can drown in that."

"Hold on," Dean requested. "I need to make a note of those for Divination."

"Are you making stuff up again?" Hermione asked, sounding only mildly disapproving.

"I tried doing honest stuff, she just said I was clearly fated for something more spectacular," Dean countered. "You know what she's like – well, when she's not making a proper prediction, anyway."

Hermione frowned. "Well… I suppose you are at least _learning_ the right methods."

"Pretty much," Dean agreed.

"Excellent news!" Fred announced, sliding into a seat next to Harry. "I just came up with an _excellent_ Animagus name!"

"I thought you already had one," Ron said. "Wait, are you Trouble or Strife?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Fred replied, tapping him on the nose with a finger. "But it's not for me!"

"I was thinking about what would be an ideal name," George said, sitting down on the other side of Harry. "And you know what are the ideal elements for an Animagus name?"

"Sort of vaguely related, bit obscure, takes the mickey out of the person, animal or both," Dean said, counting off on his fingers. "And I think they're _Marauder _names because Harry and Remus aren't Animagi."

"The technical term, as I'm sure you're aware, is Animaguses," Fred countered. "Anyway, I was thinking and I had this idea-"

"Are you doing that thing where you pretend you're the same person?" Ginny asked, catching up to them.

"What?" George said. "No."

"This is two entirely distinct but related conversations sharing some of the words to save time," Fred nodded sagely.

"So I had this idea," George resumed. "And I think that _Dean_ should be called Upstart."

"...you what?" Dean asked. "How does that work?"

George waved a book around. Harry recognized it, because he was the one who'd got it out of the library for the Twins last week – it was a sort of collection of quotes.

"We were looking for inspiration," his twin explained. "And George spotted that someone once called Shakespeare an upstart crow."

"Hold on, that's a bit of an upgrade," Dean said, blinking. "Straight from nonsense to Shakespeare?"

"To be or not to be," George told him.

Hermione tried to say something about how that was actually a bit where Hamlet was contemplating taking his own life, and how it was kind of ridiculous that that was one of the only things people remembered about the play, but Dean shrugged. "I think it's pretty good."

"Well, that's just a bonus," Fred said. "You don't get to pick your own names as Animaguses. Anyway, the one _I_ came up with was for Ginny."

"So _that's_ why you asked me to come over," Ginny said, shaking her head a bit. "All right, what is it?"

"Perry," Fred told her.

"That's really simplistic," Ron said.

"I think you'll find it describes her perfectly," George replied, pointing at their sister. "Perry, Gin, Falcon."

Everyone considered that in silence for several seconds.

"I think I'm going to start cursing you in a moment," Ginny informed them, pleasantly. "I'm not sure when I'll stop."

Fred and George laughed, then blurred into Trouble and Strife and darted in opposite directions.

* * *

The next day – the last day of nineteen ninety-four – it snowed again, blanketing the ground with a fresh coat of white.

Naturally, this meant that all three of the dragon hatchlings wanted to play in the snow again, and Harry was only too glad to go and help Hagrid out.

"Sometimes I think we should'a started with two," Hagrid said, as Harry helped Ollie burrow his way back out of a snowbank. "Three at once is a handful, an' no mistake. But then I try to think which one I'd do without, an' I can't decide."

"Was I like this?" Nora asked, catching a high-speed Gary.

"You were more good," Hagrid told her, this time in Dragonese or Parsel or whichever term you wanted to use for it. "Less naughty."

Nora nodded, then gave Gary a bop squarely on the nose as he tried to claw at her. "No! Claws are not for other people!"

Gary snorted, wings flittering a bit.

"There you go," Harry said, finished with excavating the Antipodean Opaleye, and Ollie bumped his side with a head before promptly diving into another big snowdrift.

"They might only claw you because they know it doesn't hurt you," he added, turning his attention to Nora. "Maybe?"

"Still naughty," Nora said stubbornly, and Harry nodded.

"You're right," he told her, and that made her brighten visibly.

"No!" Gary said.

It took a moment for Harry to realize who had just spoken.

"Did I hear that right?" Hagrid asked. "Was that 'is first word?"

He brushed the snow aside as he took two huge steps, reaching to where Nora was, and gave Gary a scratch under the chin. "Aren't you a clever little dragon?"

"No!" Gary repeated, apparently pleased at the reaction he'd got for saying the word the first time.

"Silly," Nora tried to tell him. "You say yes!"

"No," Gary said again, since he was on a roll so far and wasn't going to stop now. Harry had to stifle a giggle.

Then Sally dropped snowballs on Hagrid, Nora and Gary.

The Welsh Green squirmed his way out of Nora's grip, took off in a crackle of wings, and pounced at Sally to get revenge. They landed on a snowdrift, which turned out to contain Ollie, and a kind of ball of wings, tails and snarls chased itself halfway across the lawn.

"I'll have to tell Charlie," Hagrid decided.

* * *

Normally, as far as Harry understood it, it was considered a bad idea to try to learn to swim in very cold water because very cold water was dangerous.

Harry, on the other hand, was covered in dragon scales and as such felt it was quite reasonable to learn to swim in very cold water. It did mean he had to hover over the Lake and melt a hole, but Tiobald had asked for one anyway to go and visit his family and Harry was only too happy to oblige.

The first thing Harry did was a few experiments, to see what he could do while he was underwater. Seeing wasn't a problem, or at least it wasn't a problem if he had light – it was sort of dark, but he didn't need goggles – and he could hold his breath for at least a minute, though that was still a lot less time than Pernese dragons who could manage for almost half an hour.

He couldn't breathe fire underwater, at least not in the normal way, but casting a spell as he exhaled did sometimes work. _Incendio_ made a sort of blast of hot water, and the bluebell flames spell made a shimmering wave of underwater fire which slowly burned out by itself.

Harry didn't try Fiendfyre, because it would be a bit too dangerous.

After that was done, though – and, importantly, after he was sure he'd be able to melt himself a way back _out_ from under the ice in the lake if he got lost – Harry tried actually learning to swim. It was a bit tricky, and it took up most of his afternoon, but actually knowing that human swimming techniques might not work for him helped him out a lot.

Back in Little Whinging Swimming Pool, he'd always been told to do the breast stroke or the crawl, but his arms weren't _quite_ built right for it and there wasn't anything for his wings to do. Flapping them underwater was no good, it was way too dense, but eventually (and after a lot of splashing) Harry worked out that he had to sort of do a doggy-paddle but with all four legs at once. Then he held his wings like he was diving really fast, tucked almost out of the way, and wiggled his tail as an extra paddle.

It was a lot of bits to do at once, but it seemed to be pretty fast.

Pleased with his afternoon's work, Harry shook himself off and went in to change out of his swimming shorts.

* * *

Harry and his friends – most of the Unusually Shaped club, all of the new Animagi, and Sirius who wasn't a _new_ Animagus but still counted – spent the last few hours of the year a little way into the Forbidden Forest, which in this case was a lot less Forbidden because they were visiting June's family's new years celebrations.

About a third of the centaurs were there as well, Firenze and Ronan and some of the others Harry didn't recognize, plus Conal who gave all the other students present a cheerful wave.

It was a strange but interesting experience. If the Yule Ball had been all about talking to people from other countries while celebrating something that you were all involved in, then this was about seeing a different set of celebrations entirely.

The wargs built two fires connected by a pine log, using their paws and teeth and refusing any offers of help, and once it was finished they lit them with flint and steel and June's father gave a short speech in a dialect Harry didn't quite understand. Then every single member of the pack who was old enough jumped over the flaming log between the two fires, one at a time, which seemed to have some sort of important meaning.

Maybe it was something to do with how they weren't 'just' wolves, but that was just a guess on Harry's part.

Then everyone relaxed a bit and started enjoying themselves. Harry saw June being pestered by her younger siblings and cousins to cast spells, like bluebell flames or the wand-lighting charm or just using _Leviosa_ to pick things up, and after a few minutes Sirius transformed and joined in.

Fred and George handed out some Translation Toffees they'd cooked up and tuned to the warg dialect, which helped make sure that everyone could understand everyone else, and Harry in particular found it very useful because June's mother could actually teach him (and the other quadrupeds) how to dance.

There was a lot of what Tanisis called 'pronking' involved.

It started to snow about an hour before midnight, a light dusting that sparkled in the firelight, and not long after that a small group of Acromantula arrived as well. Ron made sure to stay a long way away from them, but all four of the big spiders were quite careful not to cause any offence and one of them apologized to everyone present for how stupid his cousins had been.

Overall, the whole thing was a lot more impromptu than the Yule Ball but every bit as fun. Sirius even revealed that he'd brought along a case of Dr. Filibuster's Fireworks, and the Weasley Twins spent half an hour modifying them before launching the lot off at midnight.

Animals made of fire and sparks and light flew around for half an hour, bouncing off the trees in showers of colour and chasing one another through the air, and Harry wondered if it was any sort of coincidence that he kept seeing the fox-fireworks hitting the ground a _bit_ more often than they really should have done.

It was probably just a coincidence. Unlike, for example, how Taira kept informing everyone that his hovercraft was full of eels and then looking puzzled when people laughed, or how Anna seemed terribly offended when someone said "hello" to her.

That sounded like Weasley work.

* * *

AN:

* * *

Hogwarts is going to be a different place when there's only one set of carnivoran prankster twins there.

Probably a bit calmer, though.


	62. Reflecting Pool

After spending three Christmasses at Hogwarts already, Harry found it odd to have so _few_ people coming back to the castle for the beginning of classes in nineteen ninety-five – simply because so many people had stayed over for the Yule Ball.

That said, the lessons themselves were that pleasant Hogwarts mix of expected and not expected. Harry had expected that they'd be doing History of Magic, for example, and that it might be a bit dry, but what he hadn't expected was a shift from discussing the intricate details of Goblin Rebellions to talking about the Wizardly version of the American Revolution.

Honestly, it was a bit of a strange story. In the first place the Magical government of America (which was called the Magical Congress of the United States of America or MACUSA, a name that made Harry scratch his head and wonder when the idea of a USA came about in the first place, as he hadn't thought anyone had thought of a USA yet then for there to be a MAC of) had been set up a long time before America had been independent from Britain, but it had been set up _such_ a long time ago that Britain wasn't the only place it was set up to be independent from.

The problem was lots of unpleasant witches and wizards who came over from Wizarding Europe to cause… well, problems, and so MACUSA was set up to try and stop them, but it sounded hard enough to Harry to try and find someone who was hiding even without them having most of a continent to hide in.

The other thing that was really surprising was hearing that the American witches and wizards had tried their very best to stay completely un-involved in anything American Muggles were doing. Harry had expected that the magical version of the American Revolution would involve some actual magical involvement in the American Revolution, or perhaps some separate revolutionary things, but instead MACUSA just did their best to stay out of the way and nobody magical in Europe tried to do much of anything.

Professor Binns then started talking about the differences between that and Goblin Rebellions, but it seemed to Harry like there were so many differences that you couldn't really say there were any similarities. It was nice that there hadn't been a magical war about it or something though.

Dean said that History of Magic was vaguely boring when things all worked out, and Harry wasn't sure if he agreed or not, but he did think that it was at least a nice surprise.

* * *

In Charms class, meanwhile, Professor Flitwick flourished his wand in the second lesson of the new year.

"Now!" he said. "We have already covered the Summoning Charm, and I hope you were all paying attention to that quite excellent demonstration of the Summoning Charm by our very own School Champion during the First Task?"

There were some nods, and Neville put his hand up.

"Professor?" he said. "Why didn't all of the Champions just summon their eggs? I know we covered how you can summon something by name."

Professor Flitwick was about to reply, but Dean put his hand up as well, and the little Charms teacher smiled brightly before calling on Dean.

"It's because you can enchant things so you can't Summon them," Dean explained.

"Quite right, Mr. Thomas!" Professor Flitwick announced. "Yes, and it's a kind of enchantment which means you have to be good at the original spell – it's a little bit like immunization – though of course you can't always enchant something to be immune to a spell, and someone who's better at casting the spell than you are may be able to better than you. But that's something we'll be covering in later years. Now, the reason I bring that up is to give you some idea about the _Banishing_ Charm."

He waved his wand at a nearby book. _"Depulso."_

Harry watched, impressed, as the book flew across the room and landed on top of a neat pile.

Professor Flitwick went on to explain – or to call on students so they would explain – that the Summoning and Banishing Charms were nearly but not quite opposite. That meant that there were a lot of things about the spells that were very similar, and other things that were as different as possible.

"For example, since you can – if you are good enough – summon something _from_ almost anywhere, you can also banish it _to_ almost anywhere!" Flitwick told them, practically bouncing with excitement. "Though of course you can only summon something _to_ yourself, and you can only banish it _from_ yourself. Can anyone see any other possible limitations of the charm?"

Su Li's hand went up, and she said that maybe it only worked on objects and not people.

"Ah!" Flitwick smiled. "Actually that is _not_ the case, although I can certainly see why you would think that!"

His animated chalk wrote busily on the board as he explained. "The Summoning Charm is much harder to use on people than the Banishing Charm, which is one of the main reasons why they are not _quite_ opposite spells. But another limitation of the Banishing Charm is that if you attempt a Summoning Charm and do not quite get it right, it is most likely the case that you will summon _everything_ very slightly – so nothing moves. But if you attempt a _Banishing_ Charm and do not get it quite right, you may well end up banishing everything near you by quite a lot!"

That did sound like it would be a bit of a problem, but then Harry frowned and put up his paw.

"Mr. Potter?" Professor Flitwick asked.

"Could you sort of Summon and Banish something at the same time?" Harry asked. "To do something a bit like a levitation charm?"

"I suppose you could, yes!" the teacher agreed. "It would be a little bit of a waste, perhaps, but if you wanted something to come towards you and then stop in mid-air without dropping it then you could perhaps Summon it and then Banish it at the same time. Very good thought, Mr. Potter, and two points to Gryffindor for inventiveness."

Harry felt quite pleased with himself for that.

"Now, the incantation is _Depulso,_" Professor Flitwick went on. "And if you would begin practicing the wording without wands – I have some cushions to practice on, but I think it would be best if you did not send all your things flying..."

* * *

Harry turned out to be quite good with the Banishing Charm, both in making sure he could cast it on the thing it needed to be cast on and in making sure he could get it going to the place it was meant to go.

He'd been quite good at the Summoning Charm as well, but trying to mix them together didn't really work very well. It was sort of a pity, because Harry thought it would have been a nice way to make sure that someone without hands would be able to pick things up and move them around (without the slightly slow and clumsy _Wingardium Leviosa_) but he supposed you couldn't have everything.

Maybe there was a Fifth-Year Charm that was closer to what Harry was thinking of, though by then people like June and the Barlos girls would be more than halfway through their Hogwarts career and so it would be less help anyway.

Their Charms homework over the weekend was to practice the Banishing Charm some more and to write up the ways it compared to the Summoning Charm, which was nice (because it was thoughtful but didn't take up very much time) and Harry was done with both that and the Potions homework by the evening.

It was a nice freeing feeling. Or perhaps that was the bit of _Dragonflight_ that Harry had reached.

"_I see,"_ Empress said, as Harry finished the chapter. _"So she is full of confusion, because there are three of her and because she has realized that she has caused all those problems for herself."_

"It's sort of odd, because we see later that you can't really _change_ how it goes," Harry told her. "But you still have to make sure that you do the right thing. One of my favourite characters in _any_ book has that as his job, later on."

He looked at the clock, then back at his dragon painting. "It's nearly time to stop, but I think we can do the next chapter. It's just a couple of pages."

"_You are the expert on books,"_ Empress told him.

Harry smiled, then looked across the page to one of the little poems that were called epigrams. "A fleck of red in a cold night sky; a drop of blood to guide them by; Turn again, Turn again, Turn, be gone; a Red Star beckons the travellers on..."

* * *

The weekend was a Hogsmeade Weekend, and Harry went to visit Sirius in Dogwarts on Saturday. He asked over lunch what year you learned the Bubble-Head Charm, and one thing led to another, and twenty minutes later Harry was back on the shore of the Black Lake in a patch of the shore he'd cleared of ice with his fire breath.

Which was where they stayed for the next four hours.

Harry was used to spending a lot of time trying to get a spell right, but it did sometimes get _slightly_ tedious.

"Well, you're getting the wand movement right," Sirius said, leaning back on a deckchair he'd Transfigured for himself after the first hour. "Two full circles as close to identical as possible, and yours are more identical than mine."

"Right," Harry agreed, doing the wand movement again just to be sure.

"And you're pronouncing the incantation right," Sirius went on. "Let's hear that again?"

"_Orbis Ebulio,"_ Harry complied, making sure to form the words right because he knew how much a mispronunciation could mess things up.

"So with both of those out of the way, it looks like the problem is just that you're, well, magic resistant," Sirius summarized. "Hey, try it on me?"

"_Orbis Ebulio,"_ Harry complied, pointing his wand at Sirius this time. A shimmering bubble of magic formed around Sirius' head, one which gave him a sort of distorted look like he was looking through a goldfish bowl, and Sirius gave him a thumbs-up before dispelling it with his own wand.

"That was really good, by the way, Harry," his godfather added. "I know you did a lot of practice, but that was your first time actually _casting_ the spell and it worked fine."

Harry nodded at that, pleased that he'd at least be able to help next time Ron tried going into the upper atmosphere, then snapped his claws as a thought came to him.

"The problem is that the spell doesn't want to attach to me, right?" he asked, and Sirius nodded. "So what if I actually _breathe out_ the spell? It's already on my head, then."

"Worth a try," Sirius decided, and Harry started bobbing his head around a bit.

He wanted to make sure he was making just the right movements before he tried to cast, because he'd got the movements down to a T with his wand (for whatever reason that you had to get something down to a T, instead of an R or a Y or something) but his head was something else completely.

"Did you ever have to go swimming in the lake?" he asked, curious.

"Well, we only _had_ to once," Sirius replied, thinking back. "I don't actually remember the _reason_, but it was very important indeed for us to get to the other side of the lake without running into someone on the shore. So _someone_ comes up with the idea, and James decides it's a good one, and we're all plunging into the water and Remus is the only one who remembered to actually do something so all our homework and books didn't get ruined."

He shrugged. "Though I got awful marks for all those essays, so maybe he should have let mine get wrecked."

Harry chuckled, then decided he should give it a try.

The first attempt didn't _quite_ work, and Harry had the unusual experience of being in the middle of a ball-shaped cloud of smoke for a few seconds, and the second was even stranger because it went floating off and formed a collection of bubble rings.

Fortunately, the third time was the Charm (which was a saying Harry thought was _more_ relevant to wizards). The breath out sort of became a bubble instead of a flame, rippling like a soap film did when it was pulled through the air, then snapped back to form a clear bubble all around Harry's head.

He stuck his head under the water experimentally, to see if it would last, and discovered that it was quite durable enough to survive being there.

"Well done, Harry!" Sirius said, as Harry pulled his head back out of the cold water. "Just don't give me a hug or anything, I'd freeze."

"You've got a Warming Charm on," Harry pointed out.

"Oh, _that's_ why I've not turned blue," Sirius said, in tones of great surprise. "I did wonder."

He clapped his hands. "Speaking of being warm, Ted Tonks got me a film that he thinks you might like to watch. We'll have to go to Grimmauld Place, because the telly doesn't work in Dogwarts, but it's apparently set in China or Arabia or somewhere."

Harry had to admit that it sounded like a nice idea to curl up in a chair with a mug of hot Klah and watch some telly.

* * *

"What _are_ you humming, mate?" Ron asked, back in Gryffindor Common Room after dinner.

"I actually think I recognize that," Hermione frowned. "Is that from _Aladdin_?"

"Sirius showed me," Harry answered, nodding, and hummed another few bars of _Never Had a Friend Like Me_. "The song's kind of catchy, but I'm not sure you can do those things with magic."

"Well, it's a Muggle idea of what magic can do," Hermione replied. "But I think most of those things _are_ things you can do, except for conjuring all the people."

She frowned. "And making someone into a powerful sorcerer. And the thing with… okay, maybe not."

"Who can really say what magic can and can't do, though?" Dean asked. "You know _Lumos_ was only discovered in the nineteenth century? And they didn't build a broom that could cross the Atlantic until 1923."

"1935," Hermione corrected him.

"And I think it's_ Hermione_ who can say what magic can and can't do," Neville said with a chuckle.

Harry nodded, and so did all the other boys.

Hermione looked a bit embarrassed, but pleased as well.

* * *

The Second Task was getting closer, and everyone was talking about it, but nobody seemed to have any idea what it could be.

"We've all been trying to find a way to help Cedric," Justin explained to Harry. "He says he's on top of it, but – well, Hufflepuffs stick together."

Harry nodded, and looked carefully at the plant they'd been assigned.

It had long, swaying tentacles, so it looked a lot like Devil's Snare, but then again they'd just been studying Flitterblooms where the whole point was that they looked a lot like Devil's Snare but weren't.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"I think that horrible screeching might be an endurance test," Justin replied.

Harry must have looked quizzical, because Justin explained. "When Cedric opened his prize egg after the First Task, it screamed at him. Terrible noise, I dropped my cocoa."

"Oh, right," Harry realized. "I didn't know they did that."

"Nobody in Hufflepuff is going to forget any time soon," Justin said, shaking his head.

Harry nodded sympathetically.

"Do you think it's Flitterbloom or Devil's Snare?" he asked, nodding towards their plant pot.

"Well… hmm," Justin mused, and flipped through his copy of _One Thousand Magical Herbs And Fungi_. "It doesn't seem to be moving aggressively."

There was a _whoosh_ from a few rows down.

"Mr. Thomas!" Professor Sprout said sharply. "Please do not entirely incinerate your plant, even if it does turn out to be Devil's Snare! They are small enough that they are merely mildly dangerous!"

"Oh, wait," Justin realized, pointing his wand. _"Lumos."_

The plant refused to react to the light.

"Probably Flitterbloom, then," he said.

That seemed logical to Harry.

Just to be sure, he went to grab it, and because it didn't immediately try to throttle him Harry decided they were probably correct.

That or it was extremely well-behaved Devil's Snare.

* * *

Runes that week had them all writing out possible rune schemes for their OWL projects, and then swapping them over to try and find problems in one someone else had made.

It was an interesting sort of exercise, even if it did mean Harry was trying to work out problems with something he hadn't designed so he didn't know what all the bits did. That was probably the point, though.

"Okay, so..." he said, frowning. "That's Fehu, which is a rune with a meaning of wealth, and it's a fire rune… and the next one is Wunjo, an earth rune. Which is happiness. And they're a rotational pair, so… in this case it's meaning that the wealth moves into happiness."

He wrote that down with a pencil on some scrap parchment, then looked at the third rune.

It was Gebo, an air rune, and while that was supposed to mean generosity the way it followed an earth rune didn't seem like it was going to work well.

"Maybe you should use Pertho in between?" he asked Ernie. "Because that's Water, and it's got a meaning about luck."

"Oh, yeah, maybe," the Hufflepuff agreed, looking up from where he'd been writing about Harry's own runes. "I don't want it to turn into a way to cheat at card games or something, though."

"I think if you can get an elementally inverted Dagaz in that might help," Harry suggested. "Maybe if you put it between the Wunjo and the Pertho? Or would that mean it got inverted twice, because it's a mixed rune?"

He tapped his claw on the table, then realized he was making a dent and stopped with a wince. "Um… or maybe an inverted Thurisaz?"

"I don't want _bad_ luck, either," Ernie protested. "Otherwise all this stuff about generosity and wealth might mean… I don't know, my grandad dies or something."

It was a good point, but it made Harry wonder about something.

"Maybe you need to decide what _effect_ you're after," he suggested. "Are you going to want it to find treasure or something? That could be good, and it's got some 'good luck' in it."

"Good point," Ernie agreed, scribbling on his own parchment. "Speaking of which, what's your one going for?"

"Nauthiz is meant to be doing amazing things, and then the next one is friendship," Harry replied. "I was actually trying to spell out a name to go on a sword… I think I missed some interactions as well, though."

"Yeah, going from Ehaz to Wunjo is an elemental inversion," Ernie pointed out. "And you're missing out on Hagalaz, which is a good one for a sword."

He sketched something out. "What about if you go fire-earth-ice?"

"Maybe," Harry agreed, turning over the reference book to where it had all the runes and their elements, and wrote out N-E-H-V-I-L-EL. "Or… fire-earth… ice-earth-ice-water-air? No inversions there."

"You have that ice-to-water change," Ernie pointed out. "Going from Isa to Laguz… we might need to ask about that one."

He shrugged. "I mean, I'm not sure how the friendship bit of Ehwaz works with a sword, either, but at least you've mostly got something pronounceable."

"Sometimes I think that's points _off_, for runes," Harry said ruefully.

* * *

In the middle of February they had a Care of Magical Creatures lesson which involved the dragonets again. They were still growing, but slower now, and it seemed like every time Harry saw them their language skills had improved.

By now not only were all three of them saying words, but the words were more and more relevant to what was actually going on – and they could understand at least some other words that were being said. It wasn't _quite_ where they were up to where Nora was when Harry had first heard her speak, but it actually seemed like they were learning faster than she had – unless they suddenly slowed down, they'd match up to September-the-first-1992-Nora with a few weeks to spare.

Professor Kettleburn, Hagrid, Nora, Charlie and Hermione were all pleased as punch about it, and Harry was quite pleased about it as well. He did hope they started behaving better soon, but then again maybe it was just that they were able to play rough with one another. Or it was a sibling sort of thing.

(Harry had made sure to write down when Gary had quite clearly called Sally "Smelly", and she'd retaliated by breathing smoke in his face.)

* * *

The date for the Second Task grew closer and closer, and – just like the First Task, and the arrival of the other schools, and for that matter the Yule Ball – became more and more the focus of conversations around the school.

Nobody really had much idea what the Second Task _was_ – Harry had more idea than most and the most he knew was that it would be a good idea to learn to swim – and, because nobody who actually knew was telling (probably because it would make things easier for someone who wasn't their school's Champion) that meant all sorts of strange rumours abounded.

One person said that maybe the Champions had to duel one another, though someone else pointed out that that would make more sense for the _third_ task if anything, and anyway as there were three of them it would just be decided by whoever happened to not be attacked at first. Then there was another who suggested that they'd have to go into the Forbidden Forest and bring back an unharmed unicorn, though that just sounded difficult to Harry because unicorns were so tremendously hard to find.

The oddest was the idea that the second task was that there _was_ no second task, but Harry had nary a clue how to reconcile that with screeching noises.

Finally, at about eight in the evening the night before the Task, Harry got a letter from Professor Dumbledore asking him to please show up at the side of the Black Lake at twenty minutes to nine the next morning.

The letter went on to explain how he had several of these letters to write, and was attempting to keep them all as similar as possible, so he did not wish to say specifically what time the recipient should go to bed – but that he felt it was always good to get plenty of sleep, so the recipient of the letter could decide from that what they wanted.

Harry felt that was reasonable enough, and after finishing his Transfiguration homework and making his excuses to Empress – they were on _Dragonquest_ by this point – he turned in early.

* * *

At breakfast, there was an odd rumour going around that it seemed half the school had been turned upside down looking for whoever it was that had been Viktor Krum's date to the ball.

Either that had been after Harry had gone to bed, or – just as likely – the half of the school that had been turned upside down hadn't included the top half. If anyone had asked him he'd have been able to tell them it was Anna Smith, though he wasn't entirely sure _how_ the kitsune had pulled it off.

He'd asked, but that hadn't helped.

Harry had a quick breakfast, went back upstairs to get his towel and pair of swimming trunks (both of which went in a drawstring bag which said NIKE on it, largely because that had been the first one he'd seen in the sports shop) and was outside and ready beside the Lake at twenty-five minutes to nine.

"Ah, Harry," Percy said, pausing in doing something intricate with his wand. "Professor Dumbledore said you were one of the ones he'd asked to help. He's just in that tent there."

Harry nodded his thanks, but watched for a moment longer to see what Percy was doing.

With a flourish, the older wizard unshrank a giant bank of golden seats – enough to seat at least four hundred people – so they were facing the lake, and also facing a set of half a dozen large poles sticking out of the shallows of the lake which Harry was fairly sure hadn't been there last night.

"I'm sorting out the seating," he told Harry. "Supposed to be someone from the Ministry doing it, but apparently there's a bit of a mess in Kent they're having to clean up."

That made sense to Harry, and so he duly went into the tent.

"Ah, Harry!" Dumbledore greeted him, as soon as he was through the flap. "And I see you have your swimming things. Marvellous."

Dumbledore was the first person Harry actually saw, but he wasn't the only one in there. He also spotted Cormac, Tiobald, a girl who Harry didn't quite remember the name of (but he thought she was a Seventh-Year), Ken Towler who was in the same year as Fred and George, and Luna who was wearing a pair of earrings.

"We are just waiting for the last person who is expected to arrive," Dumbledore informed them all, consulting a rather fine looking watch with elegant numerals on the dial. "Then, once all is in place, we will be able to explain the role we would like you all to play today."

"Seems a shame to wait," Cormac said, shrugging.

"Alas, I am old, and I do not wish to strain my voice," Dumbledore smiled. "Thus I must take advantage of whatever loopholes there may be to speak as little as possible. I am sure you understand, of course."

* * *

The final person to arrive was another one Harry recognized, James from his dungeons and dragons club, and once they were all sitting down Dumbledore clapped his hands together once.

"It is wonderful to see you all," he said. "And I will now be able to tell you all what the Second Task is, a little ahead of when everybody else is so lucky as to get the same information. You have doubtless noticed that we are by the side of the lake."

"Bit hard to miss, honestly," Ken chuckled.

"I find it quite easy to miss even the most obvious of things, so I must extend the same courtesy to others," Dumbledore told them all. "But all three of our Champions will be shortly plunging into the lake, so as to retrieve someone of great value to them."

The Headmaster smiled. "Of course, we have taken every precaution to ensure that none of those people of great value are in any true danger. Mr. MacUalraig's family has been most helpful in ensuring that the so-called hostages shall be safe, for example, and they have been placed under a magical sleep that will only wear off when they are brought safely back to the surface."

"So… what are we doing, then?" James asked. "If it's okay to ask, I mean."

"It is, of course," Dumbledore agreed. "Much to my consternation, it was pointed out to me some months ago that this task – while undoubtedly most exciting for all involved – would not actually be very entertaining to watch. Fortunately it was the selfsame person who pointed that out who was able to supply a fine solution."

Dumbledore picked up some strange contraptions from a nearby table, each of consisted of an array of straps and a single silvery mirror.

"For those of you who are not aware of two-way mirrors, they are mirrors that are magically connected together. Mr. Towler, Mr. McLaggen, Miss Crofts, you will each be following – respectively – Mr. Diggory, Mr. Krum and Miss Delacour. Some rather larger mirrors will shortly be in place outside, and we will be able to use them to see what each of you is seeing."

Dumbledore went on to explain where everyone else would be – Harry's job was that he'd be with James and Tiobald, both mirror-filming the area at the selkie village at the bottom of the lake and providing help in case someone got in trouble nearby or if at the end of the time they needed to bring a hostage back up.

There was a slimy stuff called Gillyweed available for any of the camera-wizards who might need it – Harry wasn't at all sure it would work on him, which was why it was fortunate that he'd managed to get the Bubble-Head Charm correct – and then Dumbledore gave them all some time to get changed into their swimwear before opening the other tent flap to reveal the lake itself.

In the time they'd been in there most of the crowd had arrived, and Harry realized it was only about ten minutes before the official deadline to start the task itself. Unless they wanted to let all the Champions just follow them straight to the village, they'd better get going straight away.

"What's Luna's job?" he asked, suddenly curious.

"I'm the translator," Luna said. "I'm also one of the reporters. It's very convenient."

Then James ate his Gillyweed, dropping into the water a moment later, and Dumbledore tapped his fine looking watch.

"Mr. Lively, I will be sure to send you a message in fifty-two minutes," he said. "It will take the form of a rather fetching phoenix, which will of course be a little incongruous in a lake; if nobody has yet reached the village, please return to the surface at that time as your Gillyweed will shortly be wearing off."

James nodded to show he understood, taking a deep breath under the water instead of above.

"And that means that if someone does reach," he began, then took another water breath, "the village, I come up first?"

"Precisely," Dumbledore confirmed pleasantly. "Off you go!"

Harry took just a moment to properly cast his Bubble-Head Charm, then he dropped into the water – his filming mirror strapped nicely in place – and followed James and Tiobald into the depths of the lake.

Really, if you were going to be going deep into a lake, it was helpful to have someone who already lived there to show you around. Harry thought that was advice everyone should pay close attention to.

* * *

AN:

Even though Harry is a long way away from doing the Tasks as a Champion, so far he's ended up involved.

The Runes stuff is not something I've fully worked out, but I've got enough to be going on with to spot the basic problems. It's sort of fun to come up with a magic system like that.

Though I might have to base the rune scheme for the finished work on Lap Cat instead of Neville, because a sword with NEHVILEL on it might be a bit… evil.

Also, it's four days more than a year since I started writing this fic. I think it's a reasonable amount of work for about a year's writing.


	63. Usually It's Princesses

It was a bit gloomy in the lake.

Harry had sort of been expecting that – a series of books he'd read back at primary school had included an underwater adventure or two, where it had been sometimes funny and sometimes important that being underwater changed how colours looked. It wasn't as bad as the book had said, though, or at least it didn't seem like it, though that could just be Harry's dragon eyes again.

There were all sorts of big underwater plants near the shore – Harry vaguely recognized them from Herbology or Potions, because the ones that weren't actively magical did at least qualify as potions ingredients so they showed up in _One Thousand Magical Herbs And Fungi_ – and Tiobald looked back as they reached them, making sure Harry and James were keeping up.

"I'd say what there was to watch out for, but it might tell the contestants," he said, his voice perfectly understandable underwater. "Just follow me."

Harry did have to admit that that was a good point.

They kept going, angling down with all three of them swimming fast – Harry did occasionally have to slow down to make sure he was steering in the right direction, but he didn't have trouble catching up again – and the amount of light gradually reduced until they were right in the deepest part of the lake. There was an expanse of black mud, which had no sign of any directions that Harry could discern, but Tiobald seemed to know where he was going.

Naturally, that was when they started to hear a kind of ethereal song.

"The Task's started," Tiobald informed them, glancing back, then turned left and led them towards the source of the song.

It was only a couple more minutes before Harry and the others reached the selkie village – or the village of Clan MacUalraig, or whatever it was they actually called it. Harry was slightly ashamed to realize he'd never bothered to ask.

Still, it was a fascinating sight. All the buildings were made of stone, and patterned with algae, but some of the bigger ones didn't have a roof – Harry supposed that you didn't really need one underwater, it wasn't like it was going to rain – and what at first looked like staining with algae, though looking more closely Harry saw that there was a kind of elaborate art to it. It looked a lot like Greek or Roman mosaics, only made with algae instead of bits of coloured stone, and most of what was on the buildings seemed to be abstract art with patterns like waves and trees and seaweed.

There were selkies, as well, which was sort of what you had to expect in a selkie village. They looked more like Tiobald than anyone else Harry had seen, but he could see the differences in their faces and he had the feeling that he'd be able to tell them apart once he was introduced – though he did think it might be a little more different if the necklaces of pebbles they wore were interchangeable, because some of the patterns were really distinctive and it'd be hard to ignore them.

Harry's friend led them along one of the weaving streets of the settlement, passing by various selkies. Some of them waved – probably mostly to Tiobald – while others called out hellos, and one at least stared at Harry in surprise.

"That's Harry, Moibeal," Tiobald said, flipping around to fold his arms at her. "I've told you and told you about my friends on the surface."

"It's mighty strange to see someone with wings, is all," Moibeal replied, looking away.

Harry sort of wondered what the audience on the surface was thinking of this.

"The statue's just over there," Tiobald added. "Follow me a bit further, then find somewhere good to watch?"

That sounded like a good idea to Harry.

He wasn't sure at first what the statue was, but they passed the final set of buildings and reached what was probably the underwater equivalent of a village square – which had a giant statue in the middle, plus perhaps a dozen guards armed with spears and tridents around the edge.

In the open space were more than a dozen merfolk singing in chorus, going on about how the champions had to come to see their home or they'd have to go back alone, and behind them was a giant stone statue.

After looking at it for a few seconds, Harry decided that if he lived in a village with a statue that big he'd probably just call it _the_ statue. It would save time because it'd usually be the one he was thinking of.

Tied by seaweed ropes to the tail of the statue were three people, all apparently asleep. Cho Chang – the Ravenclaw Seeker – was one of them, while the second was Anne Smith (or Anna Smith depending on how she was spelling it today), and Harry didn't recognize the third except that she looked a lot like Fleur Delacoeur.

"They must be the hostages," he said, and James tried to say something in reply but all that came out was a big bubble of air.

Tiobald made a sign language gesture with his right hand, holding it for James to see. "That means okay," he explained, then showed 'no' as well.

Deciding that he already knew enough sign language that he couldn't really learn anything new from Tiobald – or probably, anyway – Harry swam away a bit, looking for somewhere good to serve as a vantage point.

Remembering his mirror camera, he made sure to get a good long look at the hostages, then at the choir as they sang (this time about how _'fifteen minutes are gone by now, you'll have to find us here somehow'_), then decided he'd probably be best able to help by swimming in circles and looking for a Champion coming out of the gloom.

Or the giant squid, but hopefully the giant squid wouldn't turn up today. It would be quite inconvenient.

* * *

After about a quarter of an hour (probably), Harry realized that he didn't actually have any way to tell what time it was.

He hadn't brought his watch along, for the very good reason (he thought) that it wasn't one of the ones that said 'water resist 300 metres' you could get in some shops – so if he had brought it along it probably would have broken anyway – but that did mean he was more or less down to guessing what time it might be.

It was far too deep into the Black Lake to see where the sun was, so the way they usually did it in books wasn't really an option, which meant it was a bit of a puzzle.

After thinking about it for a bit, swimming in circles as he did with half his attention on looking out for incoming Champions, Harry remembered that there'd been that one time that Fred or George had cast a spell that told him the time. It had been near the end of Fourth Year, he thought, which must mean that it was a charm Harry was going to be learning in the next few months.

Knowing that didn't help him much now, though, because he was fairly sure he'd know what time it was in a few months. But it had been something to do with time, and Harry shrugged his wings before deciding to give it a go.

"_Tempus,"_ he said, pointing his wand up a little bit, and some numbers appeared in mid-air.

Harry was quite pleased with himself for that, until he actually looked at the numbers. He wasn't sure what they were, but they certainly weren't normal Arabic numerals or Roman ones, and for all he could tell the spell was informing him earnestly that the current time on the moon was thrilve hundred and neeb.

Giving it up as a bad attempt, Harry decided it wasn't _that_ important and returned to his patrol.

Only a minute or so later, though, there was a sudden white flash, and a spectral version of Fawkes appeared over where James was. Harry swam closer, accelerating, and though he missed the first bit he could hear the rest.

"_...afraid that you must come up early,"_ Dumbledore's voice was saying. _"Miss Delacour got into some trouble and so she has had to return to the lake shore."_

"I'll go and tell Dad," Tiobald offered, swimming rapidly over to one of the selkie guards.

"_Please bring Miss Delacour's hostage up,"_ Dumbledore's patronus concluded. _"Thank you."_

With that, the odd sight of a glowing white phoenix deep in a lake vanished, and James began to swim over towards the statue as well.

'_Your time's half gone, so don't delay,'_ the choir sang, _'Or you'll have lost your points today...'_

That made Harry curious, so he swam over to one of the nearby merpeople. This one was one of the guards, with a stone-tipped spear, and looked over as Harry approached.

"Excuse me?" he asked. "How do you tell the time? I'm curious."

"Same way you do," the selkie replied.

"Really?" Harry said, glancing down at his wrist. "You don't have a watch."

"What's a watch?" the selkie said.

Over by the statue, the girl who looked a lot like Fleur had been freed from the green ropes binding her to the statue, and James began to swim up towards the surface with her. A couple of the guards went with him, and Harry watched them rise.

"What _is_ a watch?" the selkie asked again, sounding both slightly annoyed and a bit curious.

"It's how I'd tell the time, if it worked underwater," Harry tried to explain. "It's got a crystal in it that shakes back and forth very fast, because of electricity, and then hands on it show me what time it is."

"No, we don't have that kind of magic," the selkie told him. "But time's easy. It's just obvious how long it's been."

Harry thought about that answer, remembering to treat it like he was reading a book where he'd just met a new character, then realized that it probably just meant that – unlike humans and dragons – selkies just _knew_ what time it was.

That would be really useful in, say, an exam.

* * *

Surprisingly, being involved with the Task like this was almost boring.

Harry tried to listen to the sounds making their way through the water, seeing if he could hear the sound of someone swimming, but the Selkie choir was loud enough that Harry didn't think he'd be able to actually hear past it until someone was quite close. That was a bit of a pity, but Harry also had to admit that he was really impressed with them – they'd been singing at this point for (apparently) forty-five minutes, since they'd just sang that _'But fifteen minutes now remain, and you've no chance to try again'_, and Harry hadn't yet spotted where they'd either repeated themselves or had to stop for a bit.

Some of the rhymes hadn't been very good, but then again it _was_ in another language. It was enough of an achievement that they'd all rhymed at all.

Harry swam a bit further out, to where the singing was quieter, and tried to listen again. It didn't really help, but a few minutes later he heard a faint rumbling from the mirror – like distant shouting and cheering.

Looking around, it took a moment, but Harry spotted two shapes swimming towards the village. One of them was Cedric, with a Bubble-Head Charm around his own head a lot like Harry's, and the other was Ken Towler with all the amphibian features that Gillyweed gave.

"Finally!" Cedric said, his voice a bit faint because of the water. "It's bloody hard to find anything down here!"

He kicked his feet like he was doing the crawl and pulled with his hands like he was doing the breast-stroke, Ken behind him and holding his mirror out, and Harry swam up a bit so he could get a good view of both of them from overhead.

The buzzing from the mirror was getting less faint, so everyone on the surface was probably getting quite excited.

* * *

Cedric swam straight over to the statue, and the guards parted to let him through. He rummaged in the pocket of his swimming trunks to get a knife, cut through the ropes holding Cho after a bit of work, then swam back up towards the surface of the water with Ken following him and Cho in tow.

After almost an hour underwater – and at least half an hour waiting around the selkie village – Harry had to admit that it seemed almost anticlimactic, but then again he wasn't really the target audience here because he was one of the cameradragons.

(Or the only cameradragon, but there were other camerapeople in the water.)

Maybe it would have been a bit more exciting if he'd been trying to stop the champions getting at the hostages. That felt a bit more dragon-y than filming, but then again not only had the First Task been sort of the same as that – in terms of getting past a dragon – but on top of that it was usually princesses which dragons tried to stop people getting to.

As he was mulling about how quickly Cedric's rescue attempt had gone and how it related to princess rescue attempts, though, the selkie choir announced that time was up. They stopped singing, paused for a few seconds to confer, then started a kind of repetitive chant in multi-part harmony that was just the words '_extra time_' over and over again.

Krum was still nowhere to be seen, and when there was a sudden loud burst of cheering through the mirror he was carrying Harry realized that that must mean that _none_ of the Champions had successfully retrieved their hostage inside an hour.

Maybe it was just the difficulty of navigating underwater?

Harry thought about that for a bit, decided that he'd have tried a Summoning Charm to see if it would help tug him in the right direction, then saw a distant and predatory shape moving through the lake water.

There was a little flicker of silvery light off in that direction, another one of Dumbledore's Patronuses, and another shape swam to the side a bit. Harry looked closer, all four paws gently pushing against the water so he could manoeuvre, then realized what he was seeing looked an awful lot like a person with a shark for a head.

And Cormac, as well. Which meant the person with a shark for a head was probably Krum.

As Shark-Krum swam closer, and Harry got a closer look, he realized that either Krum was really good at Transfiguration or Krum _thought_ he was really good at Transfiguration and had just got lucky. From Transfiguration classes Harry remembered that if you Transfigured a person into a dog they'd end up only being able to think about as much as a dog (which was why the Animagus transformation was so important, as it ignored that sort of thing) but Krum had transfigured his head into a shark head, and that meant he'd had to transfigure enough of his head for gills but miss enough that he could still think properly.

Kicking hard, Krum swam over to the statue, then started trying to bite Anna free. It didn't look very safe, and after the second attempt (which Harry was mirror-filming from one side) one of the selkie guards bopped him sharply on the nose and shook his head.

Harry had to say, he was impressed by Krum's reply. It didn't involve any words, but he'd never imagined a shark could either pout or roll its eyes.

Krum then swam over to another one of the guards, gently took hold of her spear a bit below the tip, and tugged gently.

"Should I let him have it?" the guard asked, looking over to the selkie with the most ornate necklace (who Harry guessed was the leader), and the leader visibly thought about it for a bit before finally nodding.

Now armed with a spear, Krum used it to cut away at the ropes holding Anna to the statue. It still took a while, and at some point Cormac vanished up towards the surface so his Gillyweed didn't wear out (which still left Harry and Tiobald to do the filming), but eventually Krum managed to get the spear blade in enough of the right places and free the enchanted kitsune.

He turned to face towards the surface, ready to swim up, and Harry was about to follow suit when he spotted something large looming overhead.

"Squid!" the selkie leader called, as – true to his word – the Giant Squid approached ominously. "Ready!"

All at once, the choristers and everyone else who'd been watching vanished into their houses. The selkie guards all swam together into a formation, while Krum decided it would be best not to swim right into the arms and arms and arms of a giant squid and hung back a bit.

Getting his wand out and ready, Harry followed the selkies. "Can I help?" he called.

"If you can scare it off, aye," the selkie replied.

Harry thought about what he could do, then pointed his wand. _"Petrificus Totalus!"_

Sadly, the spell didn't quite work fully – probably because the Giant Squid was just too big. It did however suddenly stick its tentacles together in pairs, pause, then start awkwardly swimming away.

"...that'll do nicely," the selkie leader told him, sounding impressed.

"I'd better go and take the spell off again," Harry said, remembering that you had to cast a counter spell to the Body Bind, and started swimming as fast as he could after the Giant Squid. "I'll just be a minute."

* * *

When Harry got back to the Selkie village after dealing with the Giant Squid, he found that (perhaps as he should have expected) Krum had gone up to the surface as soon as the Squid situation was under control. Tiobald had followed him, filming all the way, and Harry just shrugged before saying thank-you and swimming up as fast as possible.

At first it was hard to tell how quickly he was moving, once he'd gone high enough that he wasn't seeing the lake bed, but then it started to get lighter.

It still seemed like a long way to go, then a bit less, then all of a sudden he was right at the surface of the water and broke through fast enough to rise four or five feet into the air. Sweeping his wings up he hammered down once, then twice, and managed to settle into a glide just above the surface of the lake.

The colours seemed very odd after so long underwater. There were also a lot of people making a lot of noise in the stands, but that was for Cedric and Krum so Harry didn't really dwell on it much.

* * *

Flaring his wings and alighting over by the tent, Harry saw just about everyone else who'd gone down into the water. Most of his fellow camerapeople were actually still _in_ the water, equipped with gills and with Professor Sprout crouched next to them, and Tiobald was just getting himself seated in his wheelchair again with Luna's help.

"Excellent work with that charm, Harry!" Professor Flitwick said. "Can I just take that mirror from you?"

Harry duly took it off and gave it to him, then backed off a bit so nobody was nearby and shook himself out vigorously to shed as much of the water as possible. That still left him a bit damp, and he accepted a towel from Madam Pomfrey before looking around.

Cedric was wrapped in a towel as well, as were both Anne Smith and Cho Chang, and Krum had apparently managed to either successfully untransfigure himself non-verbally or had someone else do it because he was back to looking normal instead of like a shark.

"Thank you," the Durmstrang student said, looking up at Harry. "I did not expect the squid."

"Nobody expects the squid," Fred said, appearing as if from nowhere.

"We didn't expect the squid," George agreed, appearing as if from next to his twin (because he did).

"Speaking of which," Fred added, "We have named the squid."

"You did what?" Cedric asked. "...actually that sounds entirely like you two."

"We've decided he's now called Mongo," George explained. "You know, broadly nice, but so strong it can break stuff by mistake."

Harry didn't really understand what they were getting at, and said so.

"We'll have to pester Sirius to show you that video, then," Fred decided. "It's hilarious."

"I didn't really get the bit with the dancers near the end," George supplied.

"_Your attention, please?"_ Dumbledore requested, his voice magically amplified so everyone could hear it. _"Thanks to the fine efforts of the students who donated their time to give us all those fine views of the Challenge as it went on, I would like to announce that we have determined the points scores for each Champion."_

Harry looked over, interested to see if they'd draw lines in the sky again – a spell he sort of wanted to learn – but instead Dumbledore just kept going. _"Cedric Diggory performed a fine Bubble-Head Charm and a Warming Charm, and contended successfully with the grindylows and other perils to be found in the Lake. He returned with his hostage one minute outside the time limit of one hour, and as such has been awarded a total of forty-five points."_

"Fair enough," Cedric admitted, as the Hogwarts crowd cheered lustily for him. "Should have been just a bit quicker with that Warming Charm..."

"It took us long enough to get there with someone leading the way," Harry volunteered.

"You know what I'd have done?" Fred asked. "Ferret submarine."

"But you're not a ferret," Harry said.

"I'm not a submarine either, but you didn't complain about that one," Fred retorted.

"_Fleur Delacour unfortunately ran into trouble with a large number of grindylows, and had to return to the surface early after being helped by Miss Crofts. Her spellwork however was excellent, and we have awarded her twenty-three points."_

Harry looked around to see where Fleur was, and after a bit of searching spotted her with her hostage over by the stands. She was talking to the girl Harry assumed was probably her sister, and didn't seem too upset by the result.

"Hm." Krum said, just as Harry found Fleur.

"Come on," Anne invited from where she was sitting, snickering a bit. "Tell us how you really feel."

"I will not know until I know my score," Krum pointed out, but almost as soon as he'd finished talking Dumbledore was speaking again.

"_Viktor Krum's display of Self-Transfiguration was inspired, but he returned several minutes later than Mr. Diggory and last of all three Champions. We have decided to award him forty points."_

"I'm okay with that," Cedric said, after a few seconds of internal calculation. "I think that means there's, what, two points in it going into the final Task?"

Krum nodded.

"_And, finally,"_ Dumbledore added, _"I would like to extend my thanks – and five surprise house points – to all of our non-Champions who helped to make this a fine Task for everyone."_

"I wonder if you can call that Gryffindor bias?" Anne asked, still sounding deeply amused. "Or is it just that most of the people willing to jump in a freezing lake are Gryffindor?"

"I don't think the lake's technically freezing," Harry pointed out. "It's at least a few degrees warmer than that."

"Hey, sis," Tyler called, running over to join them. "How was it at the bottom of the lake?"

"Ask someone who was awake," Anne told him.

Harry thought that was a good point, but what Tyler did next confused him. The Slytherin third-year looked at the ground near his sister, then at Krum, then at Anne.

"Is something wrong?" Anne asked, then squirmed as her brother fiddled with her hair. "Hey!"

"What do you care, you're going to need to wash it anyway," Tyler replied. "Maybe you could make a thing out of weaving stuff into it. Lakeweed is green, Slytherin colours are green-"

As the twins continued bickering, Fred and George exchanged a look.

"...I'm getting that feeling like I'm looking at us from the outside again," George mused.

"Aha!" Tyler announced. "There was a bug in your hair."

He headed off towards the now-emptying stands, and Anne shook her head with a grumble.

"Brothers."

She picked up her towel, scrubbed it over her hair, and when she was done it looked like she hadn't been in the lake at all.

"Did you just do that with magic?" Cho asked, enviously. "That's really useful. I bet everyone wants that power."

"I don't," Harry volunteered. "But only because I don't know what I'd do with it."

Cho admitted that that was a good point.

"It's a glamour," Anne supplied. "It just looks like this, it still feels bleh underneath though."

Then the Gillyweed finally began to wear off, and Cormac was the first to hurriedly splash out of the water and cast a Warming Charm on himself.

* * *

"It was kind of weird," Ron said, halfway back to the castle. "There was stuff going on on lots of mirrors at once, so you never knew which one you should be paying attention to."

"In Muggle sports and stuff, for a team game they usually use one or two cameras and have someone whose job is to pick which one's playing," Dean supplied. "For stuff like this I think they'd probably have turned it into a tape after it was over – so they could show from one view and then another, and skip all the swimming."

"Steady on, there'd be nothing left," Ron countered.

"Most of the swimming," Dean amended. "At least this way you didn't just end up staring at a lake for an hour, right?"

"They wouldn't do that, would they?" Hermione said.

"I was the one who pointed it out to Dumbledore," Dean confided. "At this point I think I'm becoming the Being Sensible Professor. Dumbledore already said he'd ask me about what they were going to do for the _next_ Task. That's the last one, it's after the exams."

"The bit with the giant squid was kind of cool," Neville said. "When that happened there was loads of cheering."

"There was?" Harry asked, honestly a bit surprised. "I just cast one spell and it went away."

"I'm actually not sure if it was there to do anything dangerous at all," Hermione told them. "Sorry, Harry. It _was_ looking big, though."

"There was a selkie painting which showed them chasing off the giant squid," Harry replied. "I'm not sure if you saw it? And… well, I was thinking about it, and a lot of them have spears. If they don't need to defend themselves against the giant squid, what else would they need them for?"

"At this point we might be overthinking things," Ron said. "Let's go have lunch."

"It's only about quarter past ten," Dean told him. "I don't think they've even got close to starting lunch yet."

Ron considered that.

"Then let's wait for lunch. And ask Harry questions about what it was like underwater that he doesn't have to answer."

He snapped his fingers. "Actually, have you tried using that bubble head spell to see if you can breathe really high up? Does it work for that as well?"

"I'm not really sure how to test that safely," Harry admitted. "It's easier with water because you can _see_ that the bubble is there. But it _should_ work, and maybe you could test it with a Muggle pressure gauge or something."

He frowned. "But you couldn't use it by itself, in space, or you might explode."

"Yeah, exploding would be bad," Ron nodded. "...Merlin, now I want to see if it covers my whole body when I'm a squirrel. That's another charm to learn..."

* * *

Harry hadn't yet managed to work out if there was a pattern to what the House-Elves made on any given day, but it did seem like there was a lot of fish related stuff for lunch today. (Out of the available choices, Harry mused for a bit and then decided to have something made with shellfish and pasta.)

"Did you see the bit with the grindylows?" Dennis Creevey asked, halfway through some fish and chips. "What were they like?"

"Harry didn't see any wild grindylows," Colin reminded his brother. "That was the ones who were following the Champions."

"Oh, right," Dennis realized. "Still?"

"The tame ones were a bit odd," Harry admitted, thinking about the ones he'd seen with collars and string in Tiobald's home village.

He supposed maybe they were like guard dogs, or something. You could have guard dogs that were safe and that didn't make wild wolves not dangerous. (Well, unless they were actually wargs, in which case they were still dangerous but not really either wild or tame – just independent.)

"Do you think we have Potions this afternoon?" Neville asked. "Probably, right?"

"Almost certainly," Hermione told him. "I know we skipped Charms even though we probably could have had it, but Potions is after lunch and nobody would think the Champions would be down in the lake until mid-afternoon."

"Maybe we'll do Gillyweed," Neville mused. "There's got to be some way of using it in potions that isn't just, you know, eating it."

"It might let you breathe better when you're high up?" Ron suggested.

That sort of idea got swapped back and forth for a bit, but then Ginny came and sat in one of the nearby free seats.

"Did you hear?" she asked, a bit breathlessly. "Rita Skeeter's been arrested!"

"Blimey, not before time," Ron muttered.

"What for?" Neville asked. "Gran said that she's always been a pain, but she knows the libel laws _really_ well and she never quite says anything you can actually get her for."

He shook his head. "She said she tried, once."

"Well, she definitely broke the law on this one," Ginny said. "_She's_ an Animagus, but she didn't register – and she got caught using it to listen in on people just earlier today. Luna said that she got all the details from an anonymous source and she's going to be writing it up and putting it in the Quibbler."

"I wonder if Hogwarts actually attracts illegal Animaguses," Harry frowned. "That's two who've been caught here in the last three years."

"Don't remind me," Ron said. "But there's more legal Animaguses here now than illegal ones."

"The right word's Animagi," Hermione said. "I think. Anyway, what was Rita Skeeter's animal form?"

"Some kind of beetle, apparently," Ginny said.

Dean started coughing and laughing, mumbling something about bugging people, and Neville gave him a thump on the back until he wasn't choking any more.

For his part, Harry suddenly had a very good idea about what had happened to Rita Skeeter.

If he was right, it probably involved the Smiths' copy of the Marauders' Map, Tyler being worried about his sister, and getting a bug out of her hair. But that was just a guess.

* * *

AN:

Well, it's not quite uneventful as far as Second Tasks go, but it's not far off.


	64. Tempus Flies

The next week of school, for Harry, involved considerably less being underwater than the week just gone. Which was fortunate, because Underwater was nice to visit but you wouldn't want to live there.

There'd be no books, for a start.

The weather slowly improved, as it usually did when heading out of winter, and even the excitement about the Triwizard Tournament died down slightly as everyone slowly realized that, for the next month or two at least, _nobody_ had any details at all.

The Champions certainly didn't.

"It's got to involve the Quidditch Pitch again, right?" Ron asked, one lunchtime. "If they were done with the Quidditch Pitch, then we'd be able to play Quidditch again."

"I'm pretty sure they could _already_ have fitted the entire years' worth of games into the space the pitch wasn't being used," Neville added. "...maybe. Quidditch games do sometimes run pretty long."

"Maybe we could ask for some games limited to three hours?" Ron mused. "And after three hours they release Harry and he catches the Snitch to end the game."

"Wouldn't that count as Gryffindor catching the Snitch?" Hermione said, looking up from her Arithmancy notes. "And that would mean either a hundred and fifty points for Gryffindor by what's basically cheating, or a hundred and fifty points _off_ for Gryffindor by being _caught_ cheating."

"...couldn't they just average it out?" Neville asked.

"Or they could have me just point out the Snitch," Harry suggested. "Kind of like how after long enough a football game has a penalty shootout."

"I wish," Dean snorted. "Maybe with a few good penalty shootouts we wouldn't be down here in the relegation zone."

"Pardon?" Ron asked. "What's relegation? And who do you mean?"

"The hammers, who else?" Dean asked. "We've had five drawn games this season, and we're right near the bottom of the table. If we'd won a few penalty shootouts we might not be."

"I think the bigger problem there might be not the five _drawn_ games," Hermione said delicately. "But all the lost ones."

"Ouch," Ron muttered.

"Yeah, well, at least there's just League games to go," Dean said. "No more places where a single lost game is going to mess us up."

He frowned. "Though I'm not sure who to support in the Euros."

"Bulgaria?" Ron suggested. "I don't even know if they're in it."

"They could be," Dean told him. "So are Ireland, I think. It's not like Quidditch, though, don't think you could bet on Bulgaria getting the Snitch to win or something."

"The Euros aren't until 1996, right?" Harry asked, fairly sure he remembered Dudley mentioning something along those lines over the previous summer. "And aren't England hosting, so you could just support them?"

"I mean after England goes out," Dean shrugged. "It's not like it's worth pretending that _won't_ happen."

* * *

Somewhat to Harry's annoyance, it was only a few days later that they covered _Tempus_ in Charms.

"This is quite an interesting little spell," Professor Flitwick said, demonstrating it with a wave of his wand. _"Tempus!"_

Numbers appeared, showing the date and the time, and then he shooed them away before waving his wand a second time.

This time, his incantation of _Tempus_ produced a clock – the hands and numerals of an older type of clock, instead of a digital one.

"You see, this is a spell about time!" Flitwick added. "And one of the things you must know about time is that it is we humans who have decided what time is!"

He chuckled. "Admittedly the same could be said about a lot of things, such as spelling. But if you cast a spell that tells the time, you must remember to be very clear about how you want to be answered – it would do you no good to be told what time it is in Egypt – and even if you cast the spell to give you the time here, our clocks use the time in London!"

Seamus put his hand up. "Professor?"

"Of course, Mr. Finnegan," Flitwick invited.

"So how do you know you've cast the spell right?" Seamus asked. "If you might get the time in Ireland or the time in England, and you don't _know_ the time so you don't know which you're getting, how useful is it?"

"Excellent question!" Professor Flitwick said, very excited. "And the trick there is to make the spell at least a little bit about _yourself_. You must master how to make it so that the spell is cast to give you _the_ time, in the way _you_ would most like to see the time! Let's first make sure we have the incantation correct – and the wand movement is number three then number seven, like so..."

* * *

Casting the time-telling spell turned out to be quite easy, but casting it _right_ turned out to be very tricky indeed.

Harry found it terribly hard to get the right kind of focus to get the right sort of time telling, because he kept thinking about other ways you could tell the time – things like how they worked it out in the Star Trek show he'd read some books about (which gave him a confusing number with a dot in the middle), then on Pern (where he got a number of Turns and a large but negative Interval number), and finally a sundial (which was a lot better than before, but was still not very useful for knowing when the class was).

"When we started this class I wondered why wizards had watches," Dean confided, as Harry tried again and got a clock labelled in tally marks – I, II, III, IIII, IIIII and so on. "Now I wonder why they have this spell and don't _just_ use watches."

"Maybe the idea is that, once you actually get used to using it, you can check what time it is in France?" Harry suggested.

Dean tried, and got a digital-style clock telling them that it was twelve thirty.

"That doesn't look too bad," Harry said, thinking about how it wasn't lunch time yet. "But I think that's French time."

"I'm going to choose to blame you on the grounds that you distracted me," Dean replied. "You have another go."

Harry did, and this time he decided to do the sensible thing (as far as dragons, specifically, were concerned) and more-or-less ignore the bit about focusing the spell on you.

Instead, he just cast the spell into the air, thinking about how he wanted to know what the time was right here and right now, and he got clock face saying it was eleven ten.

"That looks..." Dean began, checking his watch. "About twenty, twenty five minutes off? Isn't that what Professor Flitwick said was the local time here?"

Harry was a bit disappointed he hadn't managed to get Greenwich Mean Time, but Local Time was a pretty good start.

Then he tried again and got words which said it was 'now, in this galaxy' which was very nearly completely useless.

* * *

The March edition of the Quibbler reported in great detail on Rita Skeeter, but almost none of it was about the legal case. Instead, they had a set of half a dozen photos of Rita Skeeter's Animagus form, and spent almost a quarter of the magazine discussing exactly what beetle she was and what the implications of that might be.

Then there were another few articles which talked about things Rita Skeeter had reported on in the past where she'd had information nobody would have given her.

Then, amusingly, there was an article titled STILL WRONG where the Quibbler's journalist discussed all the times Rita Skeeter had got things _incorrect_ despite having such an unusual source of information.

It made Harry wonder why she bothered to do all the Animagus-y spying, if she was just going to make half of it up anyway.

That was sort of in the back of his mind for the next few days, until Neville passed him a Daily Prophet at breakfast.

"I was wondering what the punishment was for being an unregistered Animagus," he said. "I didn't think it was this bad!"

Harry had a look at the headline, which said that Rita Skeeter was going to Azkaban for several months, then at the story in the article itself.

"I don't think it's _just_ for that," he said, reading that one of the reasons why the trial had taken more than a week was because suddenly lots of people had decided to sue her for libel at once. "But it's still not very nice. You'd think maybe there'd be a not-quite-Azkaban wizard prison, for people who need to be punished but who aren't as bad as Death Eaters."

"Gran told me once that there's bits of Azkaban that aren't _that_ bad," Neville volunteered. "There's bits where the Dementors don't go, so it's just a bit chilly. Maybe they'll just have to fit some kind of spell to stop her from flying away in beetle form?"

Harry frowned, thinking about that.

"I suppose there has to be spells on Azkaban anyway to stop people getting away," he said. "More than just the prison bars and stuff. They'd have to make it so you couldn't Disapparate, like at Hogwarts, and then on top of that do something like make a Portkey."

"They don't let people have wands," Neville replied. "But there is wandless magic, so you could be right. And maybe they need to stop people transfiguring the bars?"

"Or melting them, or something," Dean contributed, shuffling over a seat so he could join in. "And Dumbledore knows so many ways of doing magic it'd be almost impossible to put him in prison and keep him there."

"What would happen if they caught You-Know-Who?" Neville asked, suddenly sounding curious. "Everyone thought he couldn't be stopped, but if they did manage to stop him… he was really good at magic, wasn't he? And the Dementors are supposed to have liked him, anyway."

"They'd have to," Harry said, remembering something Remus had told him. "You can only cast a Patronus if you're not a Dark Wizard, and he was a _really_ Dark Wizard. So if they didn't like him they'd probably have just eaten him."

"That would make a great end to that bloke," Dean sniggered. "Would they start calling the one who did it the Dementor Who Didn't Not Live?"

"That bloke?" Neville repeated. "You're calling him _that bloke?_"

"Well, yeah, because he wants to sound important," Dean shrugged. "Why should I let him sound important?"

"Professor Dumbledore once said that if you were afraid of a name it meant you were more afraid of the thing itself," Harry said, remembering. "I said that it was probably a good idea for most people to be afraid of a dark wizard who kept killing people, and he said that that was actually quite a good point."

He nodded. "I sort of get what he means as well, though… I just think it's a lot easier for Dumbledore to say you're not meant to be scared of someone, when that person's scared of _Dumbledore_."

"Or if you're a dragon," Neville added. "Actually, come to think of it, are we allowed to say we're scared of anything? We _are_ Gryffindors."

"It might be in the school rules," Harry said. "Buried somewhere under the thousands of rules that got added because of Fred and George specifically, anyway."

"Maybe it's a good thing the Smiths joined the school," Dean pointed out. "Or they'd have to ditch two thirds of the rulebook when Fred and George leave."

* * *

"All right, everyone!" Professor Kettleburn said, one Monday morning in the middle of March. "You'll be pleased to hear that, today, we are _not_ going to be dealing with the dragons."

There was a sigh of relief from most of the other students.

"They _are_ a lot less dangerous than most dragons," Hermione said. "Present company excepted."

"I didn't say anything," Dean shrugged. "It was getting a bit repetitive, though."

"Instead, you will be meeting someone new today," Professor Kettleburn added, and waved his one remaining original hand.

Nobody saw what he was waving at for a moment, then Lavender Brown gasped as a pair of feathered wings spread atop one of the Hogwarts towers.

A big, bulky, four-legged two-winged shape took off and flapped its wings hard. It kept enough height to overfly them at about a hundred feet, came around in a circling movement, then landed with a _thump-thump_ in front of them.

Harry recognized what it was straight away, but didn't say anything because he thought maybe Professor Kettleburn was going to ask them.

"Now!" Professor Kettleburn said. "Who can tell me about this particular Creature?"

Several hands went up, and after a bit of consideration Kettleburn called on Draco.

"It's a griffin, Professor," he said. "It's one of the ones everyone really _should_ know, there's a House practically named after them."

"Quite right, Mr. Malfoy," Kettleburn agreed. "But can any of you tell me the most important thing to know _about_ a griffin?"

Lavender Brown said that it was a four-X creature, which Professor Kettleburn said was a good point but not the thing he was thinking of, and then Harry put up his paw.

"They're like sphinxes," he said, when it was his turn to answer. "They're properly intelligent."

"Exactly!" Professor Kettleburn agreed, and the griffin waved.

"Oh, Merlin," Draco sighed. "Another one."

"The _specifics_ of today's lesson," Professor Kettleburn continued, "are that we will be focusing on how one interacts with a Magical Creature which can understand you quite well but who is not able to easily reply."

"Oh, I think I get it," someone said, though Harry couldn't see who. "Sort of like someone who's French."

* * *

One by one, they were all called up to have a few minutes with the griffin. Professor Kettleburn told them quite early on that he was going through the process of learning to pronounce English, but that as his accent was still terrible it was a good way to experiment for those situations when someone might not be capable of English speech at all.

Harry had to admit that that sounded sort of useful, even if the ones he was thinking of were dragons (like Nora) and basilisks (like Empress) and so _he_ could understand them. But most people couldn't.

Hermione tried to work out what sounds the griffin _could_ make, or could make without breaking the implied rules and starting to use their still-broken English, and they settled on having one chirp mean yes and a different chirp mean no. Then she talked about things so that it was a yes or no answer as often as possible, which Professor Kettleburn said was quite good work.

Then Terry Boot turned out to have got quite good at British Sign Language over the last year or two, and was able to understand some of the griffin's own sign language – which, now Harry was looking, was about as similar as it could get to the way that Tiobald used sign after you allowed for how their hands or paws were differently shaped.

What Harry did was, he thought, quite clever. He asked if their guest could spell – he could – and drew out letters with his claw in the ground, then asked him to please spell his name. That told Harry – and everyone else – that the griffin's name was Isaac, which made it much easier to talk to him.

"Very well done, Harry!" Professor Kettleburn told him. "It's surprisingly easy for people to forget how helpful it can be to have a name to use, and one reason I did _not_ tell you Isaac's name was to see who'd remember!"

Then it was Dean's turn, and as soon as he was called on he put his hand up.

"Professor?" he asked. "What about if we get Isaac a piece of slate or a blackboard? That way if he needs to explain something complicated, he could try drawing a picture."

"Another excellent suggestion!" Professor Kettleburn told him. "I must admit, I didn't actually prepare for that one – one moment, please."

* * *

Professor Kettleburn had to Transfigure some stone to get a small blackboard and a piece of chalk, but after that the rest of the Care of Magical Creatures lesson sort of turned into a game of Pictionary.

It probably wasn't _quite_ what the original idea had been, but everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun. Including Isaac.

* * *

Hogwarts life continued, as did the world outside – though sometimes it was hard to remember that – and Harry picked up a new book in which not only the main character but just about every single character who appeared was a dragon. Some of them had magic, which meant they were Charmed, and some of them didn't and were called Natural even though the Charmed ones had actually come first.

Sadly, even in a book there was the same kind of tension between people with magic and people without magic – even when they were all dragons – but Harry hoped that if just about everyone really _was_ a dragon then they'd be able to find some shared ground in being able to fly.

Or maybe shared _ground_ was the wrong word.

* * *

One Saturday, one of the first really sunny days of the year, Harry was lying on the lawn and half-watching as Dean tried to explain to everyone how Rounders worked.

Fred and George seemed quite interested, which meant there was probably going to be some trouble (if Harry was any judge) as Fred and George were Beaters and that meant they could knock a Bludger about. The poor Rounders ball wouldn't know what it was in for.

That was just one reason why Harry was somewhere off to the side – though another reason was that Blaise, Daphne and Tracy had already set out a picnic blanket, and Harry was sort of wondering if there'd be anything going spare.

Then there was a _whack_ as Fred demonstrated, and the ball vanished somewhere behind one of the hills. Harry listened out for a faint _plop_, but when none came for several seconds he decided Fred might have managed to avoid hitting the lake.

Shifting his right wing forwards to give him a bit of shade from direct sunlight, he rummaged in his pocket and got out the Game Boy. He turned it on to have a bit of a play with, but he'd only just started when Daphne noticed.

"What's that?" she asked. "Is that a Muggle thing?"

"And how's it working?" Blaise asked. "I thought that wasn't allowed."

"Sirius got it for me as a present," Harry explained. "He thought I'd just eat it, it was sort of a joke, but it actually turned on. Muggle radios work as well, but Muggle TVs only have the sound work."

"Can I have a look?" Tracy asked.

"Sure," Harry agreed. "So the idea is that there's these blocks that appear at the top of the screen, and they move down, and you have to arrange them into complete rows. It's harder than it sounds, but it's fun."

He demonstrated, then gave it to Tracy, and she started giving it a go herself.

* * *

Three hours later, the battery died, and Harry finally got his Game Boy back.

* * *

"It was kind of fun to see what that Muggle sport was like," Neville said, that evening. "I didn't know there was so much running in them."

"That's the difference with a lot of Muggle sports," Dean agreed. "Especially ball games. All the stuff wizards do seems to be on brooms somehow, but Muggles don't have brooms and I don't think it'd be safe to play rugby on bicycles."

"There's games like Polo though, where they play it on horses," Harry pointed out.

"Yeah, but horses can steer themselves," Dean said. "It's a lot harder to crash a horse."

"I've certainly never seen anything in the news about a horse pileup on the M 25," Harry agreed.

"I'd say maybe there should be a version of Quidditch that you play on Hippogriffs," Ron said. "But knowing what the Cannons are like you'd end up running out of players."

"Cannons players, or players full stop?" Dean checked.

"Either," Ron shrugged.

* * *

"Hey, Harry?" Neville asked, a few days later. "There was something in Muggle Studies and I wanted to ask for your help."

"Is this the music thing?" Hermione checked, looking up.

"Well, yeah," Neville agreed. "I'm not really sure I understand what modern Muggle music is like. Have you listened to any of these before, Harry?"

Harry took the textbook, and had a look.

He hadn't actually _heard_ of many of them before, even though the textbook chapter was called 'modern Muggle music'. There were some very strange photographs, as well.

One picture had someone on stage, singing into a microphone, dressed in a suit of armour with a British flag on. Then another one had someone in a flower costume, and a third photograph showed the singer (who might be a man or a woman, actually) wearing a fox's head and a dress.

Then there was a whole page about someone called Ziggy Stardust. There was a photograph of him, as well, and the person who wrote the textbook thought that 'unlike most Muggles, Mr. Stardust dresses sensibly'.

"I wanted to know what their music is like," Neville explained. "Do you think you can see if there's some in Fort William? There should, if he's popular."

"You'd probably have to come down to Dogwarts to listen to it," Harry said, but he was frowning. "Or… no, Dean has that Walkman, right?"

"I think so," Neville agreed.

"I'll see if I can find any cassettes, then," Harry decided. "And probably get some batteries as well."

* * *

"Mr. Weasley, do stop humming David Bowie songs," Professor Snape cautioned, in their next Potions practical. "This Hair-Raising Potion requires a great deal of attention. If you are not careful then you and Mr. Thomas will end up floating in a _most_ peculiar way."

He turned back to the rest of the class. "Since some of you are undoubtedly foolish enough to forget this, I would like to remind everyone that if you add the Billywig stings _before_ the sugar beet then you will add too much lightness to the potion. However, you must make sure to add precisely the right _amount_ of sugar beet."

"Professor?" Blaise said, raising his hand. "What would happen if you added too much sugar beet?"

Professor Snape sighed, and walked over to inspect Blaise' cauldron.

"Mr. Zabini, when I put the instructions on the board, did I or did I not specify exactly how much sugar beet to add?" he asked. "You have added a whole half-ounce more than the requirement. Can you tell me what the next step is after the sugar beet?"

"Stir the Billywig stings into the potion, Professor," Blaise replied.

"Correct, at least," Snape allowed, then waved his wand and the cauldron floated into the air – then flipped over.

Nothing dropped out.

"It is somewhat hard, Mr. Zabini, to stir a solid," Professor Snape went on. "Fortunately this can be solved. You will need precisely one Shrake spine, which you must boil for ten minutes; at the end of this process, you will then need to stab the potion with the sharp end of the spine. This will inject heat into the potion as a whole and re-melt it, at which point you must add half an ounce of salt to prevent it solidifying again. I hope everybody has been copying this down, because I will only say it once."

Harry had started writing as soon as Professor Snape had mentioned what the extra sugar beet would do, and he was only _slightly_ tempted to make that mistake deliberately to make sure he could do the fix.

It probably wouldn't be fair, though.

* * *

Harry was quite surprised one week when he flew into Fort William and discovered that (at least according to the book shop) it was World Book Day today.

The idea of a day that was all about books was really quite a nice one, as far as Harry was concerned, and when he went inside the displays reminded him of all sorts of books he'd read back in primary school. They were usually more _children's_ books than the ones in his current hoard, but he did decide that (in the spirit of World Book Day) he'd get some Roald Dahl books and make copies of them for his friends.

He thought Fred and George might especially like _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_, which would give them ideas for sweets that they might not have come up with, though _The Witches_ was something he'd probably not get because the witches in that book weren't very nice, but _Fantastic Mr. Fox_ was the sort of thing that he thought Tyler and Anne would like a lot.

Then he came to _Matilda_.

* * *

"...I haven't actually read it in years," Hermione admitted, when Harry got back to Hogwarts. "But you're right – I didn't think of it like that."

"What's that?" Neville asked.

"It's this book," Harry explained, holding it up. "It's about a very smart girl who's sort of _so_ smart that she starts being able to do things with her mind – like knock over a glass of water, or float some chalk around."

"...so it's about Hermione, then?" Neville asked. "I knew there were those books about you, Harry, but I only really read that last one with the human you and the dragon you."

"I don't _think_ so," Hermione replied, frowning. "I'd be about the right sort of age, maybe a year or two older, but my childhood was kind of nice. Matilda's childhood is really nasty, her parents don't like her and her headmistress doesn't either."

She shook her head. "I'm starting to wonder if Roald Dahl knew someone who went to Hogwarts, now. It's a _lot_ like accidental magic, but it's enough different that you can say it's not..."

"And maybe George's Marvellous Medicine is about how Fred and George do potions research," Harry suggested.

"I doubt it," Hermione replied tartly. "They haven't blown Gryffindor Tower off the castle yet."

* * *

"Is it okay if I ask for some help?" Conal said, during the Society meeting one evening. "I'm not sure my flying lessons are going very well."

"That happens," Tanisis told him. "Don't worry. I think it takes a while because Madam Hooch has taught _loads_ of humans, but quadrupeds are different and she's only taught a few."

"It took me ages to get it right," Harry volunteered. "I had to use two for a long time, just so it was properly balanced, and I crashed a few times."

Conal thought about it, then shook his head. "I don't crash any _more_, not really, but I had a few when we were going slow and low. But I never really feel like I've got my weight on the broom right..."

"I think that sounds like something to do with the cushioning charm," Harry said. "You might need one that's more springy towards the front, or maybe stiffer towards the front because more of your weight is at the front."

"I suppose," Conal said, deep in thought. "But what about Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail? Wouldn't you have the same sort of thing?"

"Oh, wow, we had much bigger problems!" Mopsy said.

"Yes," Cottontail agreed.

"It's because we had a lot of trouble agreeing which direction we were going to go," Flopsy clarified. "We're normally pretty good about it, but flying was a whole new level of difficulty."

"Don't you lean your weight to control the broom, though?" Conal asked. "I sometimes get a bit dizzy when I do that, but..."

"Actually, that sounds like it might be a problem," Tanisis interjected. "Something to do with having more of your body mass at the front?"

"I think I'm just going to rely mostly on galloping," Conal decided. "And Apparating, when it's possible, but I'm used to galloping."

Harry was used to flying, but he had to admit he was looking forward to Apparating as well.

"And yes, you do lean from side to side," Flopsy said. "But it sort of listens to what you're thinking, as well, and when one of us thinks the best thing to do is to go straight and another thinks we're going to be slowing down a bit…"

"And it doesn't help when one of us sneezes," Cottontail added.

"Hey!" Flopsy protested. "That was just one time."

"Bit hard to forget," Mopsy giggled. "It took ages to get all the grass stains off."

* * *

When the holidays came around, it still felt like they had almost as much work as they did during term. It did mean they could treat it as a break, though, because they could get up and go to bed on a different schedule.

It somehow felt different to keep working until two in the morning and then get up at nine, to going to bed at midnight and getting up at seven. It _should_ have been exactly the same, because it was the same amount of sleep, but it wasn't and Harry wasn't at all sure why.

Still, it felt like there wasn't much they had left to learn before the exams.

By the end of the Easter holiday, Harry was most of the way through _Dragonquest_ with Empress – they'd got through the bit where Ruth hatched, while Empress had pronounced that Kylara was the most unpleasant person she'd yet encountered in a book – and Harry had explained that the next two books they could look at if they wanted to stay with Pern were one called _Dragonsong_ (which was about a new character, by which Harry meant Menolly) and one called _The White Dragon_ (which was directly continuing the story so far, but focused more on Jaxom who'd already appeared).

Empress hadn't decided yet, but it sounded like she thought they were both good choices.

* * *

"You're going to want to make sure you get this one right," Professor Moody was saying, during class. "Any spell you use in a fight, you want to get it right, but you use this one to slow someone down – if it doesn't work, they've arrived!"

He chuckled darkly. "Of course, it's also a good one to start with if you catch someone by surprise. Means you can get them tied up with another spell, or just disarm them. Always be thinking about new uses for your spells."

He pointed at Seamus. "Except you. If every spell you cast blows someone up, just make sure you cast spells on someone who needs blowing up… which is almost everyone, in a fight. Now, wand movements."

Harry watched as their Defence professor demonstrated, and gave it a go himself. First with his wand in his paw, then with his tail, then tried with his head as well in case he ever wanted to breathe the spell.

"And the incantation is _Impedimenta,_" the Professor went on. "Work it out yourselves."

"You what?" Ron asked, blinking.

"I quit," Professor Moody added. "Nothing to do with you lot, but I want to keep that jinx guessing."

With that he stumped straight out of the classroom, and Harry just caught him muttering about how at least now he wouldn't need to take Mandrake potion every few hours.

There was a long, stunned silence.

"Did that just happen?" Neville blinked.

"What's this going to mean for our exams?" Hermione fretted. "The teacher usually sets the end of year exams, but now we don't know what's going to be on them!"

"Well, this is just a guess," Ron said. "But I think _Impedimenta_ might be on them. Let's give it a go?"

"Someone should probably tell Professor Dumbledore that the Defence teacher just quit," Sally-Anne Perks suggested.

"I'll do it," Harry volunteered. _"Expecto Patronum."_

Ruth listened to his message and then vanished in a flicker of light, and then Theodore stood up.

"Let's go outside," he said. "Free afternoon, right?"

"We should really see what the textbook says we're supposed to be learning," Hermione protested.

"We can do that when we've got a new Defence teacher," Pansy said, also standing up. "I'm going to go and enjoy the sun."

* * *

"If I could have everyone's attention," Dumbledore began pleasantly, halfway through dinner. "Doubtless many of you are aware that my old friend Alastor Moody has unexpectedly quit."

He indicated the empty chair next to him.

"Fortunately, I was expecting this," he added, which got a few puzzled looks. "I have always believed that it makes things much easier if you can expect the unexpected, as it means very few things can catch you by surprise."

Harry was _sure_ it had to be harder than that, but then again Dumbledore was the expert.

"Anyone who has Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons tomorrow will regrettably have to do without a teacher," Dumbledore informed them. "I recommend that you all spend the time doing something productive, so you may use the time you normally use for homework doing something unproductive instead. I will be seeking out an interim teacher for the last little bit of the year, and I hope that things will return to as normal as Hogwarts normally sees next Monday."

"Nobody seems very surprised," Dennis Creevey said.

"Well, the Defence teacher we had in our first year turned out to be a fraud," his brother told him. "I heard Harry chased him down and caught him!"

"Wow," Dennis gaped. "That's really cool!"

"I didn't really," Harry said, a bit embarrassed. "I chased him, yeah, but Neville's the one who really caught him."

"Any idea what happened to that Firebolt?" Ron asked. "Just curious if there's one going spare… Nev, you won it off him by beating him, right?"

"That's not a thing," Neville replied. "I think it would have been sold to pay for helping his victims."

"Oh, yeah, that's much more likely but still kind of boring somehow," Ron admitted, sounding vaguely disappointed.

* * *

Their temporary replacement Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, it turned out, was none other than Percy Weasley.

Dean asked him why in the first lesson – Ron was too busy reminding himself under his breath to say 'Mr. Weasley' rather than either Sir or Perce – and Percy answered by simply saying that it would help international magical co-operation if Hogwarts students didn't all fail their Defence exams. So long as the exams were properly designed, of course, which was what he was spending much of his time doing.

Since it was only about a month until the final of the Triwizard Tournament – which, everyone now knew, was a giant hedge maze occupying the whole of the Quidditch Pitch – Harry could only wonder whether Percy was extremely overworked (because there was so much to do at once) or doing just fine (if what was currently going on for the Triwizard Tournament was mostly just waiting for the hedge to grow, because you couldn't exactly leave the traps and stuff in there for a month).

Harry _did_ manage something new during one of the classes, which was that he was able to cast the same spell from his wand (on his tail) and his breath (which, obviously, came out of his mouth) at the same time. Actually aiming them still left him a bit cross-eyed, which on one occasion led to a stunned Hermione and some heartfelt apologies, but it was still sort of neat.

* * *

"It seems like everything is focusing on exams, again," Ron grumbled, a week or so later. "This is the fourth time, and it's worse every time."

"Exams _are_ important," Hermione said.

"But aren't they testing what we know, instead of what we've memorized?" Ron asked. "Doesn't that mean you shouldn't revise, just go with what you already remember?"

"Yeah, but then you'd do worse than people who have revised," Neville said.

"And if some people revise and some don't, then the ones who do revise are sort of getting extra marks for it," Harry contributed. "You couldn't _ban_ revising, so instead it's like you get marks for good time management?"

He shrugged his wings. "That's what I think about it."

"I'd say Hermione having a time turner was cheating, then," Dean snorted. "But I don't want _her_ workload, it's ridiculous."

"It's not _that_ bad," Hermione defended herself. "I have a schedule all worked out."

"Yeah, I helped you colour it off properly," Dean agreed. "That's how I know it's ridiculous. You know she's asleep during History of Magic?"

"That's just a coincidence," Hermione told him. "And I'm attending History of Magic as well."

She pointed down at the table. "We should really be doing this Transfiguration work."

"So this is something I don't quite understand," Ron said. "We have to explain why this spell turns a _meddling_ man into a monkey. Why does it have to be a meddling man, and not any man?"

"Maybe it's because of the law of similarity," Dean suggested. "Transfiguration's easier the more similarities you're working with?"

"So a man into a monkey is harder if they're not meddling, because then they're less monkey...ish," Ron replied, thinking about it. "Maybe, but then why isn't it a meddling person?"

"Aliss Archer's Alliteration Aphorism?" Harry asked.

"Exactly," Hermione said. "Maybe you could turn someone into an orangutan whether they were a man or a woman, but you'd have to make a Perplexed Person to Primate spell instead."

"If working out these rules is half of what Arithmancy does, it's a _lot_," Ron sighed. "Okay, so it's about Arithmantic resonance… what about that classic spell about turning someone into a frog?"

"I think that's just tradition," Harry said. "Like turning mice into horses."

"Or rats into prisoners," Ron said.

All five of them found that tremendously funny.

* * *

Just a few days before the exams started, Harry looked up from his latest book.

He'd got it to give it a go and see what it was like, because it was a new book and it seemed interesting. But something about it in particular had caught his fancy.

"Hermione?" he asked. "Do you think someone could have a rune somewhere on their body, and use that to cast magic?"

"Oh, well… I don't think we've done that anywhere," Hermione said, thinking about it. "I suppose it's not _impossible_, or I can't think of a reason. Why?"

"There's things called charter marks, in this book," Harry explained – showing her the cover and the title, _Sabriel_. "It sounds like some people have them on their foreheads, and I started wondering about my scar."

"Oh, I see," Hermione realized. "It does look a bit like Sowilo, I remember thinking about that before, but I don't think it's shaped quite right."

"I probably couldn't do anything like they do in this book, anyway," Harry added. "Sabriel can do _lots_ of things with magic, and that's before you start thinking about how she's also meant to stop the undead. And stuff."

"Undead like vampires, or undead like Inferi?" Hermione checked. "And I know some people put werewolves in that category, but it's not really correct."

"Like both, I think," Harry replied. "I'm not really very far into the book. But I do think the writer is one of those people who knows about Hogwarts, somehow – he's got this thing where technology doesn't work in the magical lands, but it goes both ways and it's sort of gradual. So if you're a couple of hundred miles into the Old Kingdom you're lucky if a gun works, but if you're a couple of hundred miles into Ancelstierre you're lucky if a really basic spell works."

"That would..." Hermione began, then frowned. "I'm not really sure if that would make keeping the secret easier or harder."

"Probably a lot harder," Harry decided. "Whether or not technology works changes depending on the wind, too."

If learning magic was inconvenient enough, imagine having to check the weather before scheduling Transfiguration class. Wizards didn't even want to check the weather before scheduling _Astronomy_ class.

* * *

AN:

After all that Task nonsense, it's good to have a look at normal school work.

For certain definitions of "normal" that don't rule out the teacher randomly quitting mid-sentence.


	65. Sparks And Marks

All too soon, the exams had arrived again.

There were still theory exams, and there were still practical exams. But the theory exams were made to be a lot more like the OWLs would be, which was sort of tricky, and the practical exams were the first time they'd been told _specifically_ that being able to demonstrate things that weren't part of the normal curriculum would count for extra marks.

While that was nice to know, for things like the Charms written exam Harry couldn't really think of a way to include something that wasn't part of the normal curriculum without it feeling really forced. The questions were all about specific things, like the historical development and use of the Memory Charm or examples of how to apply spell modifiers, and while of course Harry _could_ have written something like 'and, by the way, there's a spell that lets you breathe underwater and this is what it's called' it felt like that would be sort of clumsy and wouldn't get him any marks.

He thought he did quite well overall, though.

Then there was the Practical, which was different again. Professor Flitwick gave Harry four different spells to cast, one of which was fairly simple but which Harry had never heard of, and he read the instructions as carefully as possible before getting started. That meant he had to Banish an egg neatly into an egg cup, then use an animation spell to write three words in chalk on a chalkboard – without spelling mistakes, which required careful concentration – immobilize a specific paper aeroplane in a flight of a dozen (the blue one, which took Harry two tries to hit correctly) and finally conjure a flock of a specific type of bird with the incantation _Aves pica_ and an unusual two-swipe wand movement.

Harry was able to do that after a few tries, then on a whim he cast his Patronus as well. Professor Flitwick applauded as the spectral white form of Ruth went darting after conjured birds.

"Very well done, Harry!" he said. "I'll have to mention this to the examiners next year – how marvellous!"

That gave Harry the distinct feeling he'd done quite well on that particular exam.

It was nice to know the Patronus counted for Charms as well as for Defence.

* * *

Arithmancy was almost entirely different to last year, now that Harry had two years of it instead of one. There were still the tricky maths questions, some of them about statistics and some of them about things like surds and equations, but there was a practical exam as well.

Harry went into the Arithmancy practical wondering how exactly that would work, because it seemed like it would be the same sort of thing as a practical exam in Maths or English (or History, for that matter) but what actually turned out to be going on was that everyone doing Arithmancy was doing the practical at once.

They each had a complicated set of calculations to do, working out different applications to the Wand-Lighting Charm (like extra words or syllables, or changing the wand movements a little bit). A lot of it was in the extra information they got given, so for example Harry just needed to use the quadratic formula twice and then look up the wand movement to tell how to change the pattern instead of having to spend hours doing logarithms (which, really, was probably what made the exam actually doable in the amount of time they had).

Then there was the bit which was particularly clever, Harry thought. Once they'd done all the working-out, they had to go up and cast the Wand-Lighting Charm with specific modifications to it – but each of them had a _different_ set of modifications they had to do to it, so nobody could wait until near the end and copy what everyone else was doing.

Harry's one was a sort of smoky orange light that flashed on and off, a bit like the indicator bulb on a car. Hermione, meanwhile, had one which varied between green and red smoothly instead of flashing from one to another and which would probably look quite Christmassy if it hadn't been in the middle of June.

Runes was different again, and again was split into a theory and a practical. The theory was just all about rune interactions, with a three word sentence to deal with (one which included half a dozen runic reversals, which made everything much more complicated) but for the practical Harry found himself presented with a small runic object and asked to decipher what it did.

Having the object itself (in his case it was an oak mug) made it a lot easier to imagine what the runes could mean, and Harry was able to work out that it was made to keep a hot drink hot in only about forty minutes of scribbling down notes and trying to remember the secondary meanings of various runes.

As far as he could tell, that was quite fast, as deciphering Runes went.

* * *

"We've done a lot of tests, so far," Ron noted, the next evening. "But I think this is the first time I've had to do a test written by one of my brothers."

"It's going to be odd," Ginny agreed.

"You're not doing the same test," Ron pointed out. "Knowing Perce, he'll have done five different ones for five different years."

"No, I mean I've already done my one," Ginny explained. "Both the theory and the practical."

"Really?" Ron asked. "Oh, yeah, they have to do the exams on different schedules so Percy isn't trying to supervise – what – two hundred practicals at once?"

"That is sort of the point of the schedule," Dean nodded. "So, what's it like?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't help," Ginny shrugged. "Remember? Ron just reminded us that I didn't do the same test."

"Yeah, but it would give us an idea," Ron said.

"It's probably going to be mostly about the magic we've been learning this year," Harry said – logically, he thought. "I know the OWLs are supposed to be testing everything we've learned for the last few years, but these aren't the OWLs."

"That is a good point," Neville frowned. "So not much about magical creatures, but a lot about trying to make sure if someone surprises you you react in the right way?"

"Knowing what Professor Moody was like, you'll have nothing to worry about, Nev," Ron thought. "Just whack them in the eyes with an iron bar, you'll be fine."

He paused. "Well, _they_ won't be fine, but you will."

"I think probably a Stunning spell is a better idea," Harry suggested. "The good thing about a Stunning spell is that you can undo it if you decide it was the wrong thing to do."

"Same if you Transfigure someone into an ocelot," Neville pointed out. "I think that would have been on our Transfiguration exams, though."

* * *

Percy's Defence Against the Dark Arts Theory exam was… almost a surreal experience, not because it was so strange but because it was so very normal.

Harry had half expected it to be full of strange things like how to work out if a clock secretly contained a Dementor, or how to set up one's personal effects to explode when disturbed, both of which seemed like the sort of thing Professor Moody would have them do, or alternatively that it would be the sort of test that Percy considered normal simply because he was so very good at most aspects of magical theory and not half bad at the practical sides of things.

He hadn't got twelve OWLs for nothing (thirteen if you counted Hermes) and so it could have been a very hard test indeed.

Instead, the theory exam was… practical. There were questions about how to identify spells, questions which asked for examples of a good curse or hex or jinx to use in different situations, and then some essay sections which asked the exam-taker for an explanation on when it was good to use magic to defend yourself, and what other things you could do about it.

_Then_ there were all the more usual questions about which spells did what things, and what the incantation or wand-movement was for spells like the freezing spell (_Impedimenta_, of course) or the blasting curse (_Reducto_).

Then there was the _practical_ test.

* * *

Everyone went into a disused classroom one at a time, and when Harry went in he found himself in a room full of desks with sheets of paper floating in the air – two in each of half a dozen different colours, from red and orange down to blue and purple.

"When I tell you, you need to start casting spells," Percy explained. "Red sheets have to be Stunned, orange sheets should be immobilized with a spell that does not Stun the target, yellow sheets should be disarmed, green sheets are not to be spelled in any way, blue sheets may be cursed in a more dangerous fashion and violet sheets represent immunity to most magic."

He adjusted a pair of gold Omnioculars in the corner of the room, then twitched his wand and the paper all went to hide behind the desks.

"You can start now," he added, and two sheets flicked up at once. One of them was green and the other yellow-

"_Expelliarmus!"_ Harry called, flourishing his wand, and the yellow paper burst inwards as the spell hit it. The green paper dropped back out of sight again, and Harry transferred his wand to his tail so he could move around more quickly.

A blue sheet appeared next, and Harry set it on fire with an _Incendio_. It went up with a _whoosh_, which was quite gratifying, and then a red and an orange sheet appeared right next to each other.

Harry had to cast both a Stunning Spell and a_ Petrificus Totalus _one right after another, which led to one piece of paper with a hole in it and another that got folded into a paper bird, and pranced from paw to paw a little as he looked around for his next target.

* * *

A few minutes later, Harry was nearly done with the paper.

The green ones had popped up several times, because he wasn't destroying them when they appeared, and when the purple ones had shown up he'd remembered to deal with them without using magic. It had taken a moment to think of something to do, but he'd Banished an inkwell at one and that had worked quite nicely.

The other one had just been set on fire with his breath, which _might_ count as magic or might not.

Now there was just one red one left hiding, and Harry prowled around one of the desks looking for it. He kept looking around, ears perked in case there was a rustle of paper and eyes peeled so he could spot the colour as soon as possible… then, quite suddenly and almost silently, a cloaked shape rose up from behind a desk and pointed a wand at him.

Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second, then reacted automatically. _"Depulso!"_

The spell came from Harry's breath, not his wand, and surged outwards in a wave of pressure which Banished just about everything in the room. The figure was hit both by the spell and by the desk it had appeared from behind, which seemed to be a lot more than it had been expecting to happen, and it promptly exploded in a flash of heatless sparks.

All that was left was a ripped piece of red paper, which slowly fluttered down to land on the wooden classroom floor.

"Good," Percy told him, dusting his suit down. "Reacting to the unexpected like that is, of course, graded along with the rest of the test."

"Is this because of Professor Moody's Constant Vigilance?" Harry asked.

"Quite," Percy replied, with a faint smile. "If you could wait a moment while I fix everything… _Reparo."_

* * *

"So, how did _you_ deal with the papers you weren't allowed to cast spells on?" Neville asked.

"I bet I can guess how you did it," Dean said. "Unless I'm wrong, it involves either a big metal pipe or a sword I haven't noticed yet."

"Or a panther," Harry pointed out, because it felt like he should. "I set one on fire and the other one was a Banishing spell."

"Oh, I should have tried a Banishing spell," Ron admitted. "I didn't think of it, I just conjured birds at them."

"Well, conjured things are sort of magic, but I think they can touch something that's immune to magic," Harry said. "Or I'd fall through a conjured chair."

"That's because of the Fixivity Formula," Hermione said. "It states that a conjured object is stable until it isn't."

"Actually, what did you do, Hermione?" Dean asked.

"I turned into a dinosaur and hit one with my tail," Hermione answered, sounding a bit embarrassed about it. "Then the other one I kicked very hard. I did the same thing to the surprise, too."

"Oh, the surprise," Ron groaned. "I panicked and turned into Nutkin to hide, thought for a moment, then used a blasting curse."

"That's pretty good," Neville agreed. "And… yeah, I did just hit the no-magic ones with a pipe."

"When the surprise turned up, I cast a stunning spell at it," Dean said. "That was good enough, apparently."

"Maybe it's just about making sure you do _something_," Harry suggested. "So you're not surprised, I mean."

That sounded reasonable enough, and everyone nodded.

"I turned into Perry," Ginny volunteered. "Then I went straight for the face."

"...have I ever told you I think you're my scariest sibling?" Ron asked. "That includes the ones who invent new potions and test them on themselves."

* * *

The very last exam was for History of Magic, which took all morning and left Harry feeling like he'd certainly forgotten _something_ but had no idea quite what it was.

He was quite sure he'd got the questions about the classifications of Beasts and Beings correct – mostly – though Harry was _less_ sure if all the stuff he'd written about manticores, griffins and sphinxes would be considered correct.

Really you shouldn't classify _all_ members of those species as unable to vote based on some of them being violent sometimes, and Harry had been quite firm in saying that. He knew it might mean he lost some marks on the exam, but it was one of those slightly awkward situations where he'd rather be right than… well, right in the exam-marks sense.

Thinking about it to himself as he had lunch, Harry decided it was like if you'd ended up back in the fifteen hundreds and someone asked you a science question, and you wrote down the stuff about gravity even though it hadn't been discovered yet. Or possibly invented.

That just gave Harry the giggles as he imagined Isaac Newton writing something down on a chalkboard and suddenly everything floating around him thumping to the floor, even though he knew that gravity _must_ have existed before Newton.

Otherwise an apple wouldn't have fallen on his head.

* * *

The afternoon was mercifully free, which Harry took advantage of by going for a long fly in the sun – Ginny and Hedwig both showed up as well, which was nice – and got a bit of a look at the Quidditch Pitch and how it looked now.

The maze was terribly complicated, and while Harry was fairly sure he'd be able to find the route from the entrance to the middle if he happened to be flying overhead he was equally sure that if it was him actually taking part in the Task (which he wasn't) he'd be quite lost.

And with how much various witches and wizards were bustling around inside the maze, adding things or moving them around, it seemed like being lost would be a recipe to encountering all sorts of peril.

Harry was still thinking about that when Ollie took off from the grounds, climbing with steady wing-beats to intercept him. The young dragon still wasn't quite used to how you had to be going in the same direction as someone to fly alongside them, and Harry made it a bit easier on him by pulling up and going into a hover.

"Hello!" the Opaleye said. "I'm hot."

"It is sunny today," Harry agreed. "It means it's easier to fly, though."

"Fly?" Ollie asked, head tilting a bit, then looked down. "Oh! Flying!"

Harry chuckled.

Ollie noticed something on the ground, and flipped over to dive down after it. Harry followed his trajectory for a moment, seeing that his target appeared to be Gary – who was currently in flight himself, aiming for the lake – and shook his head with a smile.

It was nice they were enjoying themselves. Even if Hagrid had had to be extra careful to make _sure_ they knew not to dive-bomb anyone else.

* * *

After a feast – a feast which included some French cuisine and some Eastern European food, probably because of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang – everyone went down to the Quidditch Pitch for the third and final task.

Professor Dumbledore had been the one to tell them to head down there, but by the time Harry reached his seat Dumbledore was already there waiting.

"Before the beginning of the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament," the headmaster said, as everyone settled into their places, "I would like to remind everyone of the rules. They are quite simple; the Triwizard Cup is in the middle of the maze, and our three Champions will be entering one by one depending on their points accrued."

He paused. "Now that I think about it, I do believe that nobody has actually explained that before, except to the Champions. Dear me, everybody must have been terribly confused about what they were earning all those points for… perhaps it would be more easily understandable if we were simply to say that the Triwizard Cup was to be worth one hundred and fifty points, and that taking it ends the Task? That seems quite appropriate for a Task to be conducted on a Quidditch pitch."

"Someone remind Dumbledore what he's supposed to be doing," Lee Jordan suggested quietly.

"I think some of this is my department, Dumbledore!" Ludo Bagman said, with a jovial chuckle – his voice enhanced by the _Sonorus_ spell just like Dumbledore's. "Now, let me remind you how the points currently stand! In first place, with eighty-six points – Mr. Viktor Krum, of Durmstrang Institute! In second place, with eighty-four points – Mr. Cedric Diggory, of Hogwarts School! And in third place, with sixty-two points – Miss Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons Academy!"

Each of the names led to a tumult of applause, Cedric getting the most from the home crowd and Fleur getting the least (Harry made sure to applaud her anyway), but Hermione leaned over towards Harry.

"I think that's wrong," she said.

"Excuse me, Ludo," Dumbledore said. "I must confess that I have never taught Arithmancy, only Alchemy, but it seems to me that since Mr. Diggory got thirty-eight points in the first Task and forty-five in the second, he cannot have an even number of points now."

He spread his hands. "Additionally, since Mr. Krum got forty points in the second Task and forty-five in the first, his number of points must end with a five. And as Miss Delacour got forty-three points in the first Task and twenty-three in the second, she must have sixty-six. I am aware of course that this does not really change things, except in that Miss Delacour may enter a few minutes earlier than if this were not to be corrected, but I feel it would be terribly impolite to allow the incorrect results to stand."

"Wow," Fred said, blinking. "Ludo Bagman can't do maths."

"It would explain a lot," George pointed out. "Wasn't there that bet someone made on the World Cup that came really close to cleaning him out?"

* * *

It took a few more minutes to get everything sorted out, largely with making sure that the big goal hoops had equally big mirrors placed into them and that all six mirrors had been properly connected with mirrors being worn by each of the three Champions – the second time that idea had been used in the Tournament – and then a somewhat chastened Ludo Bagman told Viktor Krum to enter the maze.

Once he was inside it was immediately impossible to see what was going on directly – the maze walls were way too high, and Harry _could_ have flown overhead but that obviously wasn't an option for everyone – but the mirrors meant that by looking towards either goal end Harry could see what Krum was seeing by the light of an illuminated wand.

The hedges looked quite intimidating (though also a bit flammable) and when Krum turned a corner it all looked much the same as it had before. It would be easy to get lost in the maze… which was sort of the point of a maze, now Harry thought about it… and then the signal went for Cedric to go into the maze as well, and there were two moving viewpoints instead of just one.

It was sort of helpful that they'd put a big sign on top of each goal hoop to say whose mirror was which, or it might have been kind of confusing. At least it was better than just watching the outside of a maze.

* * *

After he'd been in the maze for about five minutes, Krum crouched down and muttered a spell. Nobody in the crowd heard what he said – the mirrors still only carried sound at the original volume, and there was enough talking going on that any incantation was drowned out – but a thread of silver light emerged from his wand and formed a trail on the floor that showed several left and right turns.

"Is that a spell for knowing the way to the middle of a maze?" Ron asked. "Bit of a cheat, isn't it?"

"If you know the spell, why not use it?" Dean said. "It's that or be lost for hours."

"Yeah, good point," Ron admitted. "Okay, fair enough."

"I don't think that's the way to the middle," Harry frowned, thinking about what they'd already seen. "I think it's the way he's come _so far_."

Apparently having reached a conclusion, Krum waved away the trail with his wand and set off again. He turned right (which proved Harry's guess correct, because the silver trail had said the first turn was a left turn) and three steps into the new route found that the ground was abruptly missing and fell into a pit.

The mirror view went a bit confusing for a moment, tumbling around in all directions, and Harry realized that Krum must have tucked into a roll to absorb the impact of his landing.

Then a dozen or so large furry blurs darted towards Krum, who began casting spells to fend them off. One of them shouted _"Oi, beaky!"_ loud enough that Harry could hear it, another opted to declare _"Knickers!"_ and that was all it took for Harry to realize that Krum was fighting Jarvey.

"Blimey, wish we'd thought of that one," George said, shaking his head. "Pit full of Jarvey."

"I wonder where they found all of them," Hermione frowned, as Krum Banished a Jarvey into the wall of the pit to the accompaniment of a yelped _"Tosser!"_

"Hagrid, probably," Ginny said. "Jarveys are only three X, right? You could probably get them as pets, you know, if you _liked_ being insulted constantly."

On the mirror, Krum had finished dealing with the last of the Jarveys – it was now tied up in conjured ropes – and got out of the other side of the pit by Transfiguring a set of steps like the ladder you used to get out of a swimming pool. That done, he kept going, and Harry noticed that now _Cedric_ had run into something.

It was a sort of glittering golden mist, and Cedric cast a few spells before pulling a small rock out of his pocket. Another spell, and the rock turned into a Labrador and ran forwards straight through the mist.

Apparently satisfied, Cedric walked forwards and into the mist. Harry didn't see anything strange, but Cedric stopped for a long moment and looked up at the sky before taking another few steps.

That seemed to solve the problem, and he kept going.

"...I think we might not have got the full effect of that one," Ron suggested.

* * *

Both Cedric and Krum were jogging, now, and as for Fleur looked a lot like she was pacing back and forth and checking her watch every minute or so.

Harry could imagine why she'd want to, because she could see how the other two were doing on the mirrors and it looked like they were moving confidently. They still probably didn't know where the middle of the maze was, but they had to be getting closer and Fleur was still stuck waiting to start moving.

Then a blur came jumping out of a side path at Krum, and he fired a spell at it. The red jet of light missed, then it reached him, and for the next three or four minutes Viktor Krum was in a tense back and forth struggle with an indistinct shape that kept throwing him around and pushing him against one of the hedges.

Or, at least, that was what Harry _thought_ was going on. Mr. Bagman sounded very excited, but all Harry could really see was the mirror looking left and right a lot and occasionally getting a very close up view of a hedge. There were some grunting noises as well, but that didn't tell him anything useful, and really it could have been just about anything.

Finally, Krum broke free and ran past, not so much as looking back to see what it was, and there was an audible groan from the crowd.

"Ah!" Dumbledore said, his voice still amplified by his earlier _Sonorus_ spell. "This mirror business must have been an excellent idea, because like every excellent idea the concept has far outperformed such silly things as reality."

* * *

Cedric hadn't managed to get very far while Krum was in his fight with whatever it was they hadn't seen, and spent the next two minutes not getting anywhere at all. There was a door in front of him with a metal plate at about head height, and none of the dozen or so spells he'd thrown at the door had done anything.

Bashing on the door with his fist had just made the door plaque change, the words _Who's There?_ appearing in cursive writing before slowly fading away.

"Do you think he should go back and try another route?" Hermione suggested.

Neville frowned. "Maybe, but the last turning was quite a way back, wasn't it?"

"So it's sort of… one of those things where you can choose to give up a lot of progress, or stay stuck on a tricky problem," Ron summarized.

Lee Jordan sniggered. "I've had exams like that."

While they talked, Cedric knocked again, and _Who's There?_ wrote itself on the door just the same as last time. This time, however, after a moment the words were wiped away to be replaced by _Nobel Who?_

Then the door opened, and Cedric ran through – clearly trying to make up for lost time.

"How did that work?" Dean asked, then looked round as Fred started laughing. "What's up?"

"Who's there?" Fred repeated. "Nobel. Nobel who? Nobel, that's why I knocked."

Harry wasn't the only one who just sort of _stared_, after that.

"I'd ask who put the maze together, but it was Dumbledore, so that sort of explains itself," Neville sighed.

* * *

Fleur was by now visibly contemplating her wand, and sort of radiating infuriation. Harry supposed it was fair enough, she'd been waiting for something like twenty minutes now, but then again at least neither Krum nor Cedric had managed to find the cup yet.

In fact, Krum had just gone around a corner and run into another magical beast, this one a sphinx, and Ginny leaned forwards a bit.

"Huh," she said. "I think that's Mrs. Sanura."

"What, Tanisis' mum?" Ron asked. "I think I met her once."

"I met her a lot more than once," Ginny explained. "She goes around Luna's house a few times each summer.

They watched as Krum got closer, and Mrs. Sanura stood up before pacing back and forth. She said something, which the mirror didn't broadcast loudly enough to hear, and Hermione huffed.

"If this is a riddle, it's another one of those things which we're missing the full effect of," she lamented.

"Yeah, that is a bit of a disadvantage," Harry agreed.

He'd tried including riddles in the Dungeons and Dragons games, because it seemed like the sort of thing you had in Middle Earth, but with Tanisis as part of the party they'd just got past them in seconds. It wasn't really clear if it was an instinctual thing or a cultural thing, but sphinxes were _really_ good at riddles.

Come to think of it, maybe it was both of those things and a Ravenclaw thing as well.

"Hang on, riddles are usually word games," Neville said.

He snorted. "I sort of feel sorry for Krum now."

"He's pretty smart, right?" George asked. "Must be to make it into the tournament, and to be that good at Human Transfiguration."

Neville shrugged. "I don't think he's an idiot, or whatever… but this isn't his first language."

"Yeah, that could be a problem," George agreed.

"Hey, Harry, how would you have done the Triwizard tasks?" Dean asked. "If you'd been doing them, I mean."

"Well, for the dragon one, I'd probably have asked nicely," Harry said. "And if that didn't work… maybe I'd try using my invisibility cloak."

"Oh, yeah, that thing!" Ron remembered, as they watched Mrs. Sanura repeat the riddle for Krum. "Does it still work? Your dad had it, right?"

"Still works," Harry confirmed. "Dumbledore thinks it might just never wear out."

He didn't say anything about _why_ Dumbledore thought it was one that would never wear out, though, because he wasn't sure.

"Blimey, that's valuable," Ron said. "Or, I guess you're never going to sell it, so… blimey, that's neat."

"What about the second one?" Dean asked.

"I don't know if I'd work out the warning that it was meant to be in a lake," Harry answered, thinking. "But it _was _a puzzle involving Mermish, so maybe Tiobald would have been able to help. If I did, then I'd have learned the Bubble Head Charm… maybe I'd have used the Marauders' Map to check where my hostage was, then done my best to dive straight down."

"Nice," Neville pronounced.

"And for this one… well, I do wonder if you can just burn your way through the maze," Harry admitted. "Or fly over the top. Are either of those allowed?"

"Can you stop talking about that and pay attention?" Hermione asked. "Cedric's fighting a troll!"

* * *

Harry didn't exactly think of himself as a fighting-a-troll expert, but he'd done it a couple of times (back in First Year) and he had some more ideas about how to do it now he'd had at least three more years of training in magic and a few actual proper fights.

Admittedly a lot of the kind of thing he was thinking of for how to deal with a troll started with taking off and getting out of the way, but it was still a good first step if you were a dragon. Since Cedric _wasn't_ a dragon, meanwhile, his first step was to run back a bit and take a rock out of his pocket.

The rock got Transfigured into a dog, a big husky one, and a twitch of Cedric's wand sent it running around the troll's ankles. Confused, the troll started lifting its feet to try and squash the dog, which was barking loudly enough that they could hear a bit of it from the mirror when the crowd was being quiet.

Cedric retrieved a second rock, and this one turned into a smaller dog – a corgi – and Harry wondered offhand if Cedric's parents ran a dog shelter or something. He seemed to be very good at Transfiguring dogs… Mr. Diggory worked in the department that handled Magical Creatures, so maybe that had something to do with it?

Then the corgi jumped between the troll's feet as well, and Cedric Transfigured it again. This time it turned into a short, heavy chain, which appeared already wrapped around the troll's legs, and it only noticed when it fell over with a _crash_ and knocked a hole in the hedge.

Just about the whole audience cheered at that one.

* * *

A minute or so later, Krum was still pacing back and forth in front of Mrs. Sanura when a whistle blew.

It had been long enough that Harry wondered if the Task had been cancelled or something, but instead there was a cheer from the Beauxbatons students as Fleur Delacour entered the maze.

"She's a long way behind, I wonder how she's going to catch up," Hermione said.

"Good point," Harry agreed, focusing his attention on the mirror with Fleur's point of view.

The French student took five steps into the maze itself, stopped, and turned to face one of the hedge walls.

"...has she given up?" Neville asked. "She's not doing anything."

A moment later, though, she threw a fireball at the hedge. That burned a small hole, and she hit the small hole with a spell that made the flames flare up and blast a much larger hole.

The other side was just another corridor between two hedges, and Fleur did exactly the same thing again – first throwing a fireball with her left hand, then amplifying it with a potent spell from her wand in her right hand and blasting a hole large enough to walk through.

"Damn," Dean groaned. "I really should have thought of that one."

Neville gave him an odd look. "Which ones _did_ you think of?"

"Well, for a start the cup's protected against Summoning Charms," Dean told him. "That spell pulls things around obstacles, not through them, if you cast it right – Cedric could have just Summoned the cup to himself."

"Fair enough," Neville nodded.

* * *

As Fleur blasted her way steadily through the maze, stopping at one point to scare away a Fire Crab with a jet of water, Cedric was moving at a fast walk through the maze. Around one corner a shadowy shape in black robes appeared, but Cedric flicked his wand and the shape tripped over its own robe.

"Not getting the sound is surprisingly annoying," Ginny said. "Muggle telly has sound, right?"

"Yeah, and the sound works at Hogwarts," Ron told her. "Hey, there's an idea..."

"We are getting the sound, it's just mostly too quiet to hear," Harry corrected.

"Same thing," Ron shrugged. "Oh – look, Krum's through!"

Ron was right. Krum had apparently managed to satisfy Mrs. Sanura, and was now sprinting along an avenue between two hedges. He came to a T-shaped junction and turned right without hesitation, probably having some sort of idea about where he was relative to the middle of the maze, then skidded to a halt as he saw what was in front of him.

"Is that a Tebo?" Hermione asked.

Dean shook his head. "I don't _think_ so," he said. "On account of how it's not invisible."

"Oh, I actually heard about this from Hagrid," Ron realized.

Neville glanced at him, but Harry only noticed that in his peripheral vision – most of his attention was on Krum and the animal in front of him. (If he could judge correctly from the 'oooooh' coming from the stands, the same was true of everyone else.)

"So, what is it?" he asked, eventually.

"Oh, right," Ron remembered. "It's a wild boar."

The wild boar in question charged towards Krum, and Krum fired a spell at it. The boar's charge slowed down, as if it had suddenly gone off fast forward – then Krum reached down, grabbed it by the tusks, and Harry wasn't quite sure what had just happened but it looked like the Durmstrang champion had lifted the boar over his head and slammed it into the ground?

"I have no idea what I'm watching but it's _amazing_," Dean breathed.

* * *

Nobody got a good look at what Krum was doing at first, except that he was fighting the boar and the boar wasn't winning, but then Fleur smashed through one of the hedges nearby and looked around.

That gave everyone a look from _Fleur's_ mirror of what _Krum_ was doing, which was wrestling a boar and winning, and there were several high-pitched shrieks from the crowd at the sight of Krum's damaged robes.

Fleur just stared for a long moment, then visibly shook her head, and went through the hedge on the other side of the path.

"Oh, no..." Ron groaned. "Not those again."

Harry glanced at his friend, then at Cedric's mirror, and realized just what his friend meant. Cedric had come out into a larger open area, and there was a big black acromantula there to stop him.

"Hey, we've beaten a few acromantula, they're not that bad," Neville said.

"Speak for yourself," Dean pointed out. "I was too busy getting a prophecy about them."

Cedric was moving warily, and the acromantula moved warily as well. Then one leg reached behind a nearby bit of hedge, hooked onto something small and shiny, and brandished it menacingly at Cedric.

"...it's got a knife," Ron said faintly.

"It's an acromantula, Ron," Hermione told him.

"Yeah, and now it's got a knife!" Ron countered. "Would you rather be dealing with an acromantula or an acromantula _with a knife?_"

* * *

Things were happening for all three Champions at once now, as they got closer to the finish, and Harry had to keep glancing back and forth.

He was sure he must be missing bits, because Krum had somehow moved on from fighting a boar to being hounded by gytrashes in a pit of quicksand, and Fleur had just become what Harry judged based on nearby twigs to be about six inches tall.

There was quite a smell of smoke in the air, as well, because it seemed like at least one of the fires she'd set was spreading.

Cedric was still fighting the acromantula, who was turning out to be really good with the knife, and there were cheers and gasps from the crowd every time the spider or the Champion was getting the upper hand.

Fleur levitated herself into the air, then cast a spell which saw her suddenly go shooting through the maze at high speed, zipping around bends. Then Krum got hold of the spectral tail of a gytrash, swung it around his head, and threw it through a hedge.

Finally, Cedric tripped the acromantula and rolled past, dodging around a hedge, and the Triwizard cup was right there! He only had about ten feet to run, but Fleur's crazily zooming view turned one last corner and now Harry could see Cedric from behind through _Fleur's_ mirror.

She was moving a lot faster than he was, but just as she was about to go past a ballistic gytrash hit her and knocked her aside.

Cedric dove for the cup, and the crowd went absolutely crazy.

* * *

There was a bit of an interruption in proceedings between Cedric taking the Triwizard Cup (which was also a portkey activated by touch, something Harry had up until that point thought was a plot device from a magical detective story) and the announcement of who had won, because the hedge needed to be first extinguished and then evacuated and made safe.

Nobody from Hogwarts really cared. They were too busy cheering Cedric on, and the Hufflepuffs got a chant going – though Dean said it wasn't really up to snuff with a _proper_ football chant – which occupied everyone for a few minutes until Dumbledore cleared his throat.

"Attention, everyone!" he requested. "I would like to inform you all that Minister Fudge has something tremendously important to say."

He raised a hand, palm up. "Perhaps it is not something that is tremendously _surprising_, but I find a little routine can help lend structure to life."

"Thank you, Dumbledore," Minister Fudge said. "As, ah, _Dumbledore_ as ever."

The mirrors were still on, and Fleur – now back to normal size – happened to be looking in the right direction, so Harry caught the look of pleasure on Dumbledore's face to be referred to as being 'Dumbledore'.

He supposed it was nice to get the recognition.

"It is my great pleasure to announce," Mr. Fudge continued, "that the winner of the one hundred and eighty-ninth Triwizard Tournament is Mr. Cedric Diggory, of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

Harry was slightly surprised to discover that the spectators actually _could_ get louder.

* * *

There was a bit more official ceremony, mostly about Cedric getting his prize money, but then somehow Luna had managed to get down to the ground with the Champions and started doing interviews.

It seemed that she'd learned the voice-amplifying spell somewhere – perhaps it was required for anyone who was going to be a reporter – and the first thing she did was to ask Cedric how he felt it had gone.

"_I was actually sort of surprised to win,"_ Cedric answered._ "Fleur and Viktor are both really good at magic, I was challenged the whole way… I know I was glad for every second of head start. Either of them could have won it, I never felt like I had it in the bag."_

"_A lot of people want to know how the door worked,"_ Luna said. _"How did you work it out?"_

"_I realized when I wondered why there was the plate,"_ Cedric answered. _"It had to be there so the door could reply, and then I realized it had to be a knock knock joke."_

* * *

Luna moved on to Fleur, next, and asked her why she'd set fire to the maze.

"_I am not sure I understand,"_ Fleur replied. _"Is there a rule against it? I did not see one."_

She shrugged – by now Harry could see her on both Cedric's mirror and Krum's one. _"And, well, it got me through the maze quickly. I did not quite intend for the whole thing to start burning, but I did not intend to be caught by a Grindylow either and one has sort of cancelled out the other, no?"_

"_So what about how you finished the Task?"_ Luna asked.

"_Ah, that was a trap,"_ Fleur explained. _"It shrank me down, and I remembered that the summoning charm – if you weigh less, you are what is pulled, and I weighed _much_ less than I did before I found the trap. Part of the tournament is about quick thinking, is it not?"_

"_Quite correct,"_ Dumbledore said pleasantly, his voice still amplified by his own _Sonorus_. _"If you were in one of my Houses I might have to give you points."_

Ron hummed, sounding thoughtful. "Can we ask her to join Gryffindor really quickly? We're twenty points behind Ravenclaw."

Then Luna moved on to Mrs. Sanura, and asked her what the riddle had been because everyone had been so curious about it.

The sphinx chuckled, a purring sound that echoed around the stadium from Luna's quick amplification spell. _"It's in the church, but not the steeple. In the vicar, but not the people. In the oyster, but never the shell. In the clapper, but never the bell."_

"_It took me a long time,"_ Krum added. _"I did not know how some of those words were spelled in English. It is the letter R."_

"_Smart boy,"_ Mrs. Sanura told him.

"_I think I had all the boaring tasks,"_ Krum added.

Neville nudged Harry's wing. "Was that his accent, or was it a joke?"

Harry could only shrug.

* * *

It was interesting to hear what they'd all thought about the bits of the challenges, but eventually Luna ran out of questions (or possibly got quietly moved to the side by Percy) and Professor Dumbledore clapped his hands together.

"It is my great pleasure to pronounce this Triwizard Tournament finished!" he said. "This. Triwizard. Tournament. Finished! Thank you all, and have a wonderful rest-of-the-term."

* * *

AN:

* * *

That's the Tournament over! It's been interesting to write one which doesn't involve Harry, except in all the ways it involves Harry.

If you're wondering, a gytrash is a kind of dog spirit.


	66. Weyr Dragons Live During Summer

Within just a day or so, everyone was getting ready for the end of term.

The Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students stuck around, probably because it was easier than moving everything back to their own schools and then going home just a few days later, and Ron finally decided to go and get Krum's autograph after – apparently – agonizing over it for most of the year.

Harry couldn't say he'd noticed, and he wondered if Ron's threshold for agonizing was different to his.

* * *

"This is going to be kind of a weird question," Conal said, in the last society meeting of the year. "But… do we actually have to take the train back to London?"

He tapped a hoof on the floor with a _tchak tchak_ noise. "It seems like it's a long way to go just to then be Apparated back near home again."

"It's traditional," Harry replied, giving it some thought. "But I don't think that means it has to be done."

He considered. "How do you do with the Floo?"

"I'm no good with it," Conal said.

Tiobald's hands flicked through some quick signs, and Harry watched closely.

"That was… it's not good in a wheelchair, either?" he checked, and got a nod. "Yeah, I have a bit of trouble with it myself."

"It's not so bad if you're low to the ground," June said. "But I imagine it wouldn't be easy for you."

"It really wasn't," Conal agreed. "When I went to get my things from Diagon Alley, Professor McGonagall Apparated me back instead because it had gone so badly."

Harry felt glad he'd managed to get on with Floo somewhat, now, because Apparating simply wasn't an option for him.

"What about a Portkey?" he asked, then shook his head. "No, that wouldn't work because what you're concerned about is going that far, not how to get back."

"I think a Portkey would _help,"_ Conal said, thinking about it.

He looked over at Tanisis. "Am I right that you don't need someone to take the trouble to wait for you with a Portkey?"

"That's what I've heard," Tanisis told him.

"Then… should I talk to Professor Sprout about it?"

Harry nodded. "This is exactly the sort of thing to talk to Professor Sprout about," he said. "Now you know what the options are, and she can see what works best for you, and speak to Professor Dumbledore if you want."

Conal smiled, then put a hand to his mouth to cover a snigger. "I think I will take my things back home first, though."

"Watch out," Tyler said, lounging on one of the desks – it was actually the first time Harry had seen what one of the Smiths looked like when they did one of the in-between transformations that kitsune could do but animagios couldn't.

(Harry still wasn't sure what the plural of animagus was, but he didn't think it was that.)

"Why?" Conal asked, suddenly looking nervous again. "Is something wrong?"

"I've heard there are wolves in the forest," Tyler warned. "There might even be one stalking you right now."

Conal's only response was a long, heartfelt sigh.

* * *

"So we _are_ sure that Quidditch is going to be back to normal next year, right?" Ron asked, as they pulled out of the station. "I think that's our last chance to have a team that's more than fifty percent Weasley."

"Well, unless the Triwizard Tournament gets in the way again," Fred observed. "...hmm, tricky one. If they held the Tournament next year, would Fred and I go?"

Ron blurred into Nutkin, sniffed, then blurred back into his human shape. "You mean _George_ and I, Fred."

"Drat!" George said, snapping his fingers. "We hoped you wouldn't work it out so quickly."

"It's been more than a year," Ron said, frowning. "I feel like an idiot for not getting it already. How is that quickly?"

"We were aiming for never," Fred clarified. "That sounded reasonable."

"Blimey, you don't have a high opinion of me, do you?" Ron asked.

"Mate, you're seriously trying to work out how to get into space for your OWLs," Dean sniggered. "_Something_ about you is high."

Neville groaned. "And now I remember we've got our OWLs next year."

"It probably won't be that bad," Harry said. "We'll have to pay attention, and so on, but there wouldn't be much point in those tests we have to do at the end of each year if they were so much easier than the OWLs that they don't give you a good idea."

"That is a good point," Ron admitted.

"Now can you stop talking about OWLs?" Ginny asked. "If you keep it up for much longer I think you're going to wake Pigwidgeon, and the quickest way to get him to shut up again is to give him a letter to deliver."

"Can't you put a cloth over his cage to make him go to sleep or something?" Dean checked.

"Not for an owl," Ron supplied. "Well, it works on Errol, but that might just be that it's hard to get him to wake up some days."

"Isn't that because they normally sleep during the day?" Harry asked.

"That's what I was saying-" Ron began, then frowned and started writing in the air with his finger.

"You all right?" Neville asked him.

"I think I just managed to checkmate myself," Ron said.

"So, who or what do you think the most surprising new student next year is going to be?" Dean asked.

"I think a what is still a who," Luna told him placidly. "If they're able to come to Hogwarts, I mean. Though I suppose if there was an owl who could come to Hogwarts, they might think it was a bit offensive to be talking about who they were."

"I can't tell if that's a terrible owl pun or being completely sincere," Fred observed. "You're _good_."

"I try not to be evil," Luna smiled.

"So we've got a suggestion for owl," Dean said, writing that one down.

"I said not to talk about them!" Ginny reminded them all. "If someone does set him off, I'm making whoever did it write a letter for him to carry off and get him to shut up."

* * *

"How long is Rita Skeeter going to be in prison?" Dean asked. "I don't know how long you get for illegally being an Animagus."

"Well, she got a bit more time because of all the libel," Neville replied.

He opened up his trunk and rummaged around. "Where did I put… aha!"

Harry leaned down to look from his bag-rack perch, and read the article as Neville unfolded an old _Prophet_.

"She's out already," Neville told them, summarizing it. "But she's on probation for a while, and because she did so much spying and reporting on things she's also not allowed to use her Animagus form to get anything she reports on."

"Blimey, how are they going to track _that_?" Ron asked.

Harry could already see, and he had to grin a bit. It felt like one of the bits in a David Eddings book where they were explaining an ironic punishment, only a lot less nasty so it was easier to smile about when it actually happened.

"Basically, she has to prove how she got the information she reports," Neville summarized. "And if she can't prove how she got it – either because she got it through being an Animagus or, you know, it's just not true – then it's just assumed she used her Animagus powers to get it and she gets a nasty fine. Or prison if she keeps doing it."

Hermione frowned. "So that means that if she actually does her reporting job properly then she's fine?"

"Exactly," Neville agreed.

"She does sometimes deal with gossip and stuff, though," Ginny pointed out. "Won't that mean she can't use anonymous sources?"

"Oh no," Neville replied, completely without inflection. "What a pity."

Hermione looked conflicted. "I'd _say_ that that's sort of interfering with the freedom of the press, but she's really been abusing it so I don't actually think it's that much of a problem."

She did have a good point, but she also had another good point so they cancelled out a bit. Or that was what Harry thought.

* * *

"In a way, it's sort of a pity you're the one who lives in north London," Dean told Hermione, as the Hogwarts Express rushed through Harrow and Wealdstone and Wembley Stadium came into view on the left.

"I don't think it's a pity from my point of view," Hermione replied. "Though I suppose it would be nice if there was another Hogwarts student close enough I didn't have to take the Tube to go and see them."

"No, I mean, we're not _that_ far from where you live, and we get a bit closer before we go into the station," Dean tried to explain. "So if you had your stuff all loaded into a backpack, maybe one of those ones that's bigger on the inside like the Tardis, and _you_ were the one who turned into a crow, you could just jump out the window and fly home."

"I _see_," Hermione realized. "Because I'm a dinosaur, and you live in east London."

That made perfect sense to Harry, though after a moment he realized that that really didn't say much.

_He_ was certainly going to fly home, and after a bit of thought Harry realized that Dean could probably fly home as well more easily – or more cheaply – than going home on the Tube, if he could fit his things into a backpack.

It was a pity he hadn't realized that earlier, but he _did_ now know what to get Dean for his next birthday.

* * *

Once they'd actually pulled into Euston, or Kings Cross (depending on whether you paid attention to what the train was doing or what the people who got out of the train were doing), everyone said their goodbyes and Harry took off to fly home.

It was a gloriously hot day, which meant Harry could turn right back around and gain lots of height from the thermals over Euston. He kept climbing until he could see right across the river and a long way past it, including the big Canary Wharf Tower off in the distance, then banked his wings and turned for home.

4 Privet Drive wasn't really his _only_ 'home', at this point, he felt quite at home at Hogwarts and at both of the places where Sirius lived – which with the Floo were almost one place, really – but he was still quite happy going back to Privet Weyr and spending a month or so immersed in the perfectly-normal. Living up in his magical tent pitched in the attic with a window he could fly out of whenever he wanted.

Well, normal was relative, and at least his _relatives_ were normal.

* * *

Once he'd arrived back at Privet Drive, and set all his things up upstairs, Harry went down to help with preparing dinner and was told proudly about how Dudley had got into boxing.

It hadn't actually made it so Dudley _lost_ very much weight, Harry's cousin was still almost as big as he'd been before, but it seemed like more of it was muscle. That sounded much healthier, and Harry congratulated Dudley for it quite seriously over their evening meal – which in this case happened to be a large chicken and vegetable pie, albeit one with a dish instead of a pastry base because Harry hadn't quite worked out how to do the pastry base and side walls bit.

He was also careful not to eat the base, or the cutlery, because Aunt Petunia wouldn't be happy.

Then Dudley took him into his hoard room – which Harry thought was a reasonable label, even if Dudley called it just his 'other' room – to show off something that Uncle Vernon had got him specially from Japan late last year. It was a new games console, one which Dudley proudly said hadn't even arrived in Britain yet, and he rummaged through some CDs before putting one into the CD drive and turning it on.

Harry had to admit, he was quite impressed. The game was a sort of plane fighting one, where you flew a fighter plane around shooting down enemy aircraft and not being shot down yourself, and loud music played while you did it.

It looked like you had a _lot_ more missiles than Harry thought was really feasible, but it meant that Dudley could fly around shooting down a lot of aircraft instead of having to go back home for more after shooting at just one or two.

One of the strangest things about watching the game was that a lot of it was in Japanese, but then again it wasn't like you needed to understand everything that was being said in a game that was mostly about shooting down lots of enemy planes. And Harry liked the way that Dudley's aircraft were painted (which it showed whenever he won a mission), with sort of red streaks on an otherwise white aircraft.

Harry started wondering whether maybe he should tell Sirius about it, to see if Sirius was interested. Once the console came out in Britain, anyway.

* * *

Since it was July, and he was at Privet Weyr, Harry's main – though not only – focus was chores during the day and homework usually in the evening.

It was sort of a routine by this point, as this was Harry's fourth summer with homework and so on, and it made Harry vaguely wonder how normal it was to have a 'routine' on the scale of an entire year.

Probably people who worked in shops had one? In some parts of the year, like now, it was all ice cream and sun hats – then in the winter it was all Christmas things and woolly hats. So maybe that counted.

Regardless of that, Harry got steadily through his homework, mixing up the subjects a bit so that he wasn't just doing History for days on end.

The way he thought about it, he'd have to do the work either while he was at Privet Weyr or while he was at Grimmauld Place, and of the two it was Grimmauld Place where he was more likely to have other fun things (like going to meet friends, or trying to enjoy Sirius' latest bit of Muggle technology) to take up his time. So doing it now was the best option.

* * *

Much to his delight, Harry discovered a new book set in the world of the Belgariad while he was in a bookshop in London one day.

It was the story of how Belgarath the Sorceror had actually become Belgarath the Sorceror, starting with how he'd originally been called just Garath, and Harry was up to the point Garath had just met Aldur before realizing somewhat sheepishly he couldn't actually read the whole book in the bookshop. It did make buying it a simple decision, though, and he read through it as far as Poledra's first appearance (as a wolf who liked to say the word 'Remarkable' about things, rather than as someone actually called Poledra) in between doing homework that night.

He'd have gone further, but he was slightly worried that his essay on Transfiguration might start to include examples from the magical system in the book rather than the real one.

* * *

Harry felt like he hadn't ever read something_ quite_ like_ Belgarath the Sorceror_ before, because it was a book about how someone who'd always appeared as a crotchety old man who was also one of the world's strongest wizards had got that way to begin with. He'd certainly read books where someone _was_ one of the world's strongest wizards, like Gandalf, and a few where someone had _ended up_ one of the world's strongest wizards, like Pug or Sparrowhawk, but this was the first time he'd read a book where he'd first encountered someone like that _as_ their powerful self and then read about their history.

It made Harry wonder how Dumbledore had become Dumbledore. It had obviously been a long time ago, because from what Dumbledore had once said Tom Riddle had been scared of him even when Dumbledore was his teacher, but it must have been a sort of process.

Maybe Dumbledore had been in love with a warg in the past. But if he had been, that was the sort of thing which Harry didn't feel comfortable asking about, because it was Dumbledore's past and not his.

* * *

Towards the end of July, and with his homework nearly done, Harry got two letters on the same day – one delivered by the hyperactive Pigwidgeon, the other by his own much more stately Hedwig.

The first letter was one from Charlie Weasley, and it was officially letting him know that they'd tested the dragons raised according to 'Hagrid's methods' in Romania as well as the dragons raised according to both Hagrid's methods and the usual methods at other magical locations.

The results were that dragons raised by Hagrid's methods were calmer around humans, and less likely to set them on fire, but only Ollie, Sally and Gary were actually able to speak Dragonish. Charlie said that that more-or-less proved that Hogwarts was where you had to raise a dragon to make them intelligent, at least at the moment, and that the next test would probably be in a few years when Nora was old enough (and independent enough) that they could have her help raise hatchlings away from Hogwarts.

The way Charlie was writing in an earnest spirit of discovery and trying to work out this puzzle made Harry feel sort of guilty, because he _knew_ the answer – it was Empress – but it wasn't really like he could tell Charlie that. And even if he did tell Charlie, he couldn't actually _say_ the explanation either.

Harry wasn't even sure if Charlie knew, or if Dumbledore would have told him.

The other letter was from Dean, which made Harry look up at Hedwig with a frown.

"How did you know he wanted to send me one?" he asked, and Hedwig fluffed her wings a bit and looked pleased with herself.

Smiling, Harry read the letter. It had a little sketch of Harry reading a book, which was nice, and Dean also asked if it'd be okay for him to come around Harry's place. He said that he knew Harry's aunt and uncle didn't really like magic, but pointed out that they didn't actually need to know if Dean specifically came to visit – because if Harry sent his address and left the loft window open, Dean could just fly (if it wasn't too far, as the crow flies) and visit that way.

Harry wasn't sure whether to be impressed or annoyed at the joke about how the crow flew.

It didn't sound like all that bad an idea, so he wrote back saying where his house was and asked Dean to make sure he was careful.

After thinking about it a bit, he scratched that bit out, and instead wrote that Dean should probably just follow Hedwig back. Then he added a guess at how far it was, based on measuring on a map, and eventually just collected up all the adjustments he'd made and wrote a new letter that included them all.

* * *

Dean arrived early the next evening, flying up through the open window into Harry's loft not long after dinner and swerving right to go through the opening of the tent.

He alighted on a chair Harry had left out for him, tilted his head slightly, then shifted back to human and let out a long sigh.

"Phew," he muttered. "That was more tiring than I thought."

"Are you okay?" Harry asked, worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Dean waved off, then shrugged. "Well, kind of hungry?"

Harry promptly started boiling some water for pasta – pasta was nice and easy to keep stored for a long time, so he had some available – and cutting up an onion into slices to make the sauce to go with it.

"You're weirdly good at that," Dean said. "I've never actually seen you do it before."

Harry shrugged his wings. "I've been doing it for a while. Aunt Petunia likes me to help with the cooking."

He shot a jet of flame at a pan, heating it up, then put the chopped onion in to simmer.

"I got a look as I was coming in," Dean went on. "And I think your house has, what, four bedrooms? Your aunt and uncle must be pretty well off."

"I suppose they must be," Harry agreed, thinking about it. "Uncle Vernon has a drill company, but I never really thought about that sort of thing. And my cousin always gets a lot of presents."

He pointed down. "That's actually what one of the bedrooms is used for. Then there's Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's one, my cousin's one, and the last one's a guest bedroom."

Dean snorted. "And then there's another two bedrooms up here, as well. When does it turn into a hotel?"

"When someone stays the night and pays for it, I think," Harry replied, adding some garlic to the pan and putting the pasta into its own pot. "I'm not sure if you're planning on flying back at night or waiting until tomorrow, but I won't ask you to pay."

"I could pay in sketches?" Dean suggested, grinning. "My bedroom window at home is open enough for Upstart to get inside, but Mum and Dad know I might be here overnight."

* * *

Harry thought the resulting pasta worked quite well, and he was glad for how much he'd made because Dean ate considerably more than half.

"I'm kind of surprised how hungry I was," he admitted, as Harry washed the dishes. "You don't want help with that, do you?"

"It's fine," Harry waved off. "You're a guest."

He put them in a rack to drip dry – there wasn't much dirty, so he didn't need it all put away – and sat down at the table.

There was a short pause.

"So… what exactly do people do when they're round at someone elses' house?" he asked. "Normally when we're at Neville or Ron's places it seems really obvious..."

"Well… chat," Dean shrugged. "Play games, but you've not got a games console except that game boy. Does your cousin have one?"

"We might keep my family awake if we did that," Harry decided, regretfully. "The same's true of watching films, really."

"What about a board game?" Dean asked.

At that, inspiration struck, and Harry snapped his claws together.

He had just the thing.

* * *

"I _really _don't think this is how Monopoly is meant to be played," Dean sniggered, as he rolled the dice and moved his token forwards.

It landed on a hotel, and Harry groaned.

Reaching into the box, Dean took out four houses and replaced the hotel with them. Then he paid himself money out of the bank, equal to how much it would cost to turn the houses into a hotel in the _normal_ rules, and piled it all up with the rest.

He had quite a lot by now, but so did Harry.

"I've always sort of wondered why it is that so many dragons do this kind of thing," Dean added. "Not the game, I mean, real life."

He thought about that for a moment.

"Or in stories, at least."

"Well, shiny things _are_ nice," Harry said, looking over his shoulder towards his hoard room. "But I don't think even a normal dragon from a reserve would go burning buildings down except by accident, or if it was very hungry."

He rolled his own dice, and went over Go before landing on Old Kent Road. That meant he had to pay two hundred pounds back to the bank, which they'd decided was because of a Hero robbing them while they were out, but he did at least make some of the money back by destroying a house on Old Kent Road.

"There's that old story, isn't there?" Dean frowned. "The one about the German dragon who had a hoard. Maybe that's where it comes from."

"Maybe," Harry agreed, as Dean took his turn to roll the dice. This time he landed on another hotel, but when he reached into the box there were only three houses left.

"What do I do now?" he asked.

"You can't raid it," Harry answered. "Eventually someone is going to land on a house, and when that happens the lost house becomes available again."

"Right," Dean agreed. "Okay, your turn."

Harry's dice landed him on a Community Chest place, and he read it before sniggering.

"Huh?" Dean asked, and Harry showed him the card.

"You have won second prize in a beauty contest," Dean read off, then sniggered as well. "I want to know who the other contestants were."

"Maybe what's going on is that the whole city was built on top of dragons," Harry suggested, taking ten pounds and pushing the dice over to Dean.

"With Gringotts I'm pretty sure that's more or less right," Dean replied.

_He_ landed on a chance card, which contained the silliest result so far – a speeding fine.

"So… does this one get reversed or not?" he asked. "Would you like to be the policeman who fines a dragon for driving too fast?"

"Or flying too low," Harry pointed out. "What about if the policemen try to stop the dragon and the dragon steals their car, and gets twenty-five pounds out of it?"

"Not much for a car," Dean frowned, then realized. "Oh, right, of course, since we're playing your sort of dragon he just ate most of it."

"Yep," Harry agreed, taking the dice back and shaking them.

He thought that playing Monopoly as a _hoard_ game was a lot better than as a _board_ game.

* * *

By some sort of undiscussed teenage alchemy, and not the sort Dumbledore was an expert in, neither Dean nor Harry actually _decided_ to stay up until two in the morning but that was what happened.

Harry had remembered to warn Empress ahead of time that he probably wouldn't be able to read any more of their current book, so that eased his conscience, but mostly what happened was that he and Dean just talked about things.

Lots of things.

It was a nice way to spend the evening, especially over mugs of hot chocolate.

* * *

The next morning, Dean set off again – with Hedwig flying overhead, carrying a letter to Dean's mum telling her how much he'd enjoyed Dean's visit – and Harry waved until they were out of sight before getting back to his homework.

It was about all the planets and moons, this time, and Harry was quite good with all the big ones but once it got to the fiddly little moons of Jupiter and Saturn and things like that he still had to look some of them up.

Doing the bigger asteroids took some time as well, and by the time he was done Hedwig had returned. She got a treat for that, which seemed acceptable, and Harry smiled before checking what else he had to do in Astronomy.

There was just an essay about how stars could die, so Harry started with novas and worked his way up.

* * *

It was the day before his birthday that Harry found a brand-new or nearly-brand-new book which looked interesting.

He knew you weren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, and he did do his best, but sometimes the cover _could_ help because it showed that someone involved in writing or illustrating the book had had some really interesting ideas.

In this case, the book's cover had a kind of golden watch on it, with three big black hands and one smaller spindly hand, and instead of having twelve hour numbers on it it had thirty-six symbols showing all kinds of things. One of them was a set of compasses, then next to it was an old style lute, and as Harry picked up one of the books and turned it around he was just impressed that every single one of the symbols was different and a lot of them were – well – symbolic.

_Someone_ had to have put that much effort in, probably the author, and if they'd put that much effort into something to go on the cover it had to be a good sign.

It was only after Harry had already bought it that he belatedly realised someone might have got it for his birthday. Then he shrugged, because really it was possible _two_ people had got him the same thing – which was true any year – and it was the thought that counted.

Opening it up to see what it was like, Harry made his way past the bits about how this was a first edition and reached the first actual page.

"_Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall,"_ he read, and then had to stop and look at that again.

He had no idea what a daemon was, but he was already interested.

* * *

By the morning of his birthday, Harry was at least halfway through the book and was already quite sure what a daemon was.

It was sort of fascinating. A daemon was almost like an Animagus form, but outside the body instead, and everyone had one. Or maybe it was like your Patronus, but always there and real and (again) everyone had one.

It was always – or it seemed to be always – the opposite gender to you, and when you were young it kept changing shape from one thing to another but once you were old enough it settled down into being one thing that represented you.

Just that idea by itself was fascinating, but in the book there was also a kind of strange version of Earth – a lot closer than most fantasy books set somewhere like Midkemia or Arda, but not quite the same like in the SERRAted Edge books. Oxford was very important but there was no mention of Cambridge, at all, and Harry wondered if that was because the Fens (which was where Cambridge was, and where Slytherin was from in fact) hadn't been drained in this world. And there was someone who was Texan but not American, apparently, and – well, Harry was really interested and it was sort of a shame when he had to stop.

At least he hadn't had to do breakfast, even for himself – Aunt Petunia had made a lot of scrambled egg with bacon, and there'd been enough for him as well – and he was on his way back up to his loft when Dudley coughed.

"Uh… Harry?" he asked. "Got a minute?"

Harry agreed that he did, and Dudley opened the door to his first bedroom to invite Harry inside.

* * *

"Look, um..." Dudley began, after a minute or so of awkwardness where Harry didn't know what Dudley wanted and Dudley didn't seem sure either. "What are your sort's birthdays like?"

"Well… I think you've seen all of mine," Harry said, after thinking a bit. "We get each other presents… friends come round, sometimes. You know."

"Seems pretty normal," Dudley admitted. "Get anything good?"

"It's mostly arriving today, I think," Harry frowned. "Or tomorrow. I'm going to my godfather's house for the rest of the summer."

"Didn't know you had a godfather," Dudley said. "How come you live here and not there, then?"

He paled slightly. "He's not that one who was in prison, is he? Mum said he only got out on a technicality."

Harry assured him that Sirius had just been being silly, and that 'technicality' meant 'he didn't do it' in this case.

"Right, right," Dudley sighed in relief. "And, you… don't think that I'm nasty, do you?"

He kept talking before Harry could answer. "Because, um… there was this film that me and – that Piers and I went to see around Archie's house yesterday, about this girl who's one of your sort who gets bullied, and… it doesn't go well for her bullies?"

He looked a bit shifty. "Don't tell Mum and Dad, it's… a bit more of an adult film. Archie had to get his brother to get the video for him."

Harry frowned for a moment, thinking.

"I won't tell Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon," he assured Dudley. "But I don't think it's a good thing if you think you're acting like the villains in a film like that, whether or not the person you're treating that way is magical."

Dudley looked thoughtful but a bit confused, and Harry decided to try explaining a bit more. "If you knew that any of my sort could do that, would you treat them that way?"

"No!" Dudley replied quickly.

"Well, then, would you treat my sort better than anyone else?" Harry added.

"...oh," Dudley said. "Right."

He blinked. "But… wait, wouldn't you want your sort to be treated better?"

"I'd like my sort to not be treated worse, that's about it," Harry said.

Then he pointed at the nest of consoles around Dudley's bedroom TV. "Is there one of those you'd like to play two-player?"

"Sure!" Dudley agreed, sounding deeply relieved for the change in topic, and rummaged around for a bit before coming up with a cartridge for a racing game.

"I get to play Mario," he added. "But you can be whoever else you want."

* * *

AN:

Dudley may be the apple of his parents' eye, but he's still a teenager and someone like him has to find a few boundaries to exceed.

And I continue my trend of "showing things appropriate for the time period" with the first Ace Combat game, _His Dark Materials, _and so on.


	67. They Didn't Misspell Perfect

After his birthday, and finishing the _Northern Lights_ book – which was one of the most obvious cases of a book being ready for a sequel he'd read in a while – Harry carefully packed his things up in his tent, packed his tent up in his bag, politely told Aunt Petunia that he'd be going to Sirius' house for the rest of the summer, and took off into the blue sky to make his way to London.

It was a fine day and Harry was in no hurry, so he flew north to the Thames before turning to make his way gradually downriver. It was a nice way to stretch his wings, following the meandering route of the river – which, now it had so many houses on both sides, was probably pretty much stuck taking the same route forever instead of continuing to meander – until he was well into the middle of London with Southwark Bridge disappearing behind him and London Bridge coming up ahead.

Pulling up, Harry got his bearings and then flew straight to Grimmauld Place with a feeling that he was quite ready for lunch, thank you very much.

He wasn't sure what Kreacher would be able to make on short notice, but he had the feeling it would be nice.

* * *

"Any idea who the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is going to be this year?" Sirius asked, after he'd said hello to Harry and given him a hug (which was sort of saying hello again, really).

Harry was a bit confused, because he thought he knew who the teacher would have to be this year. "Isn't it Remus again?"

"He's still busy with the pack," Sirius explained, shrugging, and waved Harry through into the living room.

Kreacher was making a noise in the kitchen, and poked his head around the door as Harry put down his bag. "Polite dragon! Kreacher is making pancakes. Would polite dragon like cheese, ham, spinach, tuna, peppers, chicken, mushroom, strawberries, cream, ice cream, chocolate spread or banana?"

Harry had to think about that, tilting his head as he did, then nodded. "Yes, thank you."

Sirius cackled. Kreacher looked quite pleased, though, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

"You're going to get either three or four confusing pancakes or one really big one," Sirius advised him, shaking his head.

"I answered the question," Harry pointed out, and looked around to see if anything had changed.

As it happened, something had. There were a collection of new drawings and paintings all framed together on one wall, all of them magically moving and each of them showing a different animal, and Harry only needed to look for a moment before spotting the connection.

There was a squirrel, a wolf, a dog, a dinosaur, a stag…

"Are those all of us?" he asked, waving his wings vaguely to try and express the expansive definition of 'us' he was using. "And shouldn't there be one or two fox ones?"

"Those are on the waiting list," Sirius replied. "So is the heron one. Your friend Dean's still working on them."

He winked. "I thought it'd make a nice summer job for him."

Harry had the feeling that Sirius was paying Dean quite well for the pictures, because it was just the sort of thing Sirius would do to pay a Muggle-born wizard (or possibly half-blood, Dean wasn't sure) a lot of money to help decorate the Black family house.

"Anyway, Remus is too busy teaching to teach, this year," Sirius clarified. "He's doing really well, but he's basically having to give all the others a full magical education himself – well, you know, all the ones who are witches and wizards. And they're _all_ learning maths and English and so on."

"Will Martin and Alex be able to get jobs?" Harry asked, worried. "They didn't grow up in Muggle society, so if anyone tries checking they'll be kind of… invisible."

"I did ask Remus that," Sirius told him. "He pointed out that there are jobs for Squibs, and it's the same sort of thing – then he reminded me that once Fred and George graduate next year they could do with shop help, so that's just one of the things they could do. And I'm sure those two will be understanding of little furry problems like that."

"Right," Harry agreed, following what Sirius meant.

He had to admit, he didn't do pranking and _he_ was interested to see what Fred and George would be coming up with.

"Pancakes are ready!" Kreacher reported, bringing in two plates – one of them with a giant pancake on it, the other with a sort of folded up chaos of several pancakes on top of one another. "Master did not say what he wanted, so I made a pancake pancake."

"...I knew I should have remembered to do that," Sirius muttered. "Can I have some ice cream?"

Harry cut himself a slice of his pancake, tried it, and found to his pleasure that Kreacher had sort of arranged things so that at one end was the cheese-and-ham, then the rest of the fillings were in different places and each slice was a different portion of the meal.

As he was going through the chicken and mushroom, though, he remembered something and swallowed.

"Why did you ask me, Sirius?" he checked. "When I arrived, I mean."

"Oh, well, Dumbledore talks to you a lot, so I thought I'd see if he'd said anything to you," Sirius explained. "I've never been a Prefect, I don't know how much input they get."

"Neither have I," Harry said, a bit confused by the _non sequitur_.

"Really?" Sirius asked. "Dumbledore asked me two weeks ago if there'd be any problem with you being a Prefect, and I said there wasn't any, so he said you'd be one."

Harry's ears_ poinged_ up in surprise, and his glasses went flying. They nearly landed in Sirius' pancake, but he caught them just before they got ice cream on them.

"Pardon?" Harry asked, once he was sure he wasn't going to lose his glasses to ice cream.

Sirius looked confused. "Wasn't it in your letter with your things to get?"

"We haven't got those yet," Harry explained.

He took his glasses back and settled them properly on his nose. "Don't Prefects have to spend lots of time patrolling the corridors?"

"It's usually only about one evening a week for each Prefect," Sirius replied, thinking back. "After we made the Map we kept track of it."

"Oh, I could use the Map to check," Harry realized. "That would be helpful."

"It wasn't made for evil, Harry," Sirius warned him.

* * *

Now that he was at Grimmauld Place – and Dogwarts, depending on what sort of day he wanted – Harry could go and visit his friends, or his friends come and visit him, more easily.

And without requiring an owl escort.

The first visit was when Blaise Zabini came around, which was a bit of a surprise for Harry – or, at least, the owl asking for the chance to visit was a surprise, the visit itself wasn't a surprise because it had been arranged – and Harry was quite impressed with how Blaise took the trouble to arrive by Tube and walk from the station instead of using the Floo.

"One of my stepfathers was a Muggle," he explained. "I thought I'd see if I still remembered what he said. How do I look?"

Harry took a step back, and looked Blaise up and down.

"I'm not sure about the hair," he said, critically. "It looks more like the sort of thing my aunt and uncle would think magical people would do."

Blaise reached up to the spikes his hair had been gelled up into, and winced slightly. "Pity, I spent ages on these. What about the clothes?"

Those were a pair of slightly faded blue jeans and a T-shirt announcing the existence of a band called D : Ream, and Harry considered them for just a moment before nodding. "Those are great. If your hair's back to normal I don't think most Muggles would even notice you."

Blaise said he'd take that as a win.

* * *

Unlike with Dean at Privet Weyr, there were things set up at Grimmauld Place that let Harry do the sort of thing Dudley did when _he_ had a friend around. It had been a bit tricky to properly wire Grimmauld Place for electricity – according to Sirius he'd had to do a bit of fast talking to explain why somewhere in London hadn't been set up for electricity until the nineteen nineties, especially when it had what looked a lot like electric lighting and even a fridge – and there was the occasional problem with Chizpurfles, but the practical upshot of it all was that there were a couple of games consoles and a video player all connected to a fancy switch-button arrangement that told the TV what it was supposed to be showing.

Harry decided that, since Blaise was probably either new to video games or at least a bit out of practice, the best choice was going to be Sonic The Hedgehog 3 because you could have one player playing Sonic (who played the game like normal) and the other player playing his sidekick Tails (who could be knocked out and recover without any ill effects).

"So you're telling me," Blaise began, once Harry had finished explaining, "that Muggles regularly plug things into their tellies that let them move around a supersonic blue hedgehog and a flying two tailed fox."

"I don't know if a _lot_ of Muggles do," Harry was at pains to explain. "But this game is quite popular."

"I really don't know why Draco thinks Muggle entertainment is boring," Blaise told him. "I can understand why he might not _like_ it, but one thing that idea is not is boring."

"I kind of think that it's hard for a big group of people of all ages to _be_ boring," Harry said, as he pressed the button to switch the television over to the games console with a _clunk_. "It's sort of like… if you have a group of people, some of them are going to be thinking creative things. And if there isn't already the creative thing they want, if they want to read it they have to write it themselves. Or if it's a game, they have to invent it themselves… so the smaller the group, the more writing the average person seems to do."

The console announced that it was by _SE-GA_, which made Blaise glance at it in surprise – then the Slytherin boy shrugged.

"I wonder if Tyler and Anne know about this," he said, as Harry navigated through the menu to select a new game and pick the two-player mode. "If you can play a fox, I mean."

"Maybe I'll have to tell them, in case they don't already know," Harry suggested.

* * *

After about twenty minutes, Blaise decided that – while interesting – the game wasn't really his sort of thing.

Harry was fine with that, because it would be kind of rude to insist that someone didn't know what they really liked, and instead got out a chess set. That promptly led to him being thrashed three times in a row, but it wasn't like he'd expected anything else.

"So, what do you plan to do after Hogwarts?" Blaise asked.

Harry was trying to work out how to get out of a rather nasty fork Blaise had unleashed, and he tried to fix in his head the idea he was thinking of trying.

Once that was done – he thought maybe he could move a bishop so it would threaten Blaise's forking knight, _and_ a valuable piece Blaise had on the other side of the knight – he looked up, actually thinking about Blaise's question.

"I don't really know," he had to admit. "Or… there are lots of things I _could_ do, I'm just not sure which of them is actually a plan. Bishop forwards left two spaces."

The bishop duly moved, and Blaise nodded in contemplation. "Not bad. So what sort of things?"

"Well, one of them is being an Auror," Harry said. "Or… another idea was that I could start teaching? That's interesting, I've already been teaching Dragonish but it'd be good to teach it all over the place."

"You could always join the Ministry," Blaise pointed out. "You'd be sure to enter the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures if you wanted, even once Anne and Tyler and the others have done their NEWTs you're _always_ going to be the most senior non-human Hogwarts graduate. And from there, and with your start, you could end up Minister in a decade."

Harry had to snigger. "That sounds like you want me to take over the country."

"Yes?" Blaise asked. "I know it's a Slytherin thing to want to be sneaky and gain power, but it's a Gryffindor thing to want to be famous."

He pointed to one of his pawns, ordering it to move forwards. "Besides, if the country's yours then as a dragon you'd have to protect your hoard. That's how it works, isn't it?"

Put like that, Harry had to admit the idea was sort of tempting.

Even if it sounded a little bit like Smaug running for mayor of Laketown.

* * *

A few days later, Harry had the chance to go around to Ron's house.

Saying that Harry went around Ron's house, though, sort of undersold what happened. Harry wasn't just visiting Ron, he was visiting all of the Weasleys (and none of them for the first time), as well as saying hello to Dobby (who was quite different from Kreacher, and it was sort of funny to Harry that it was the cheerful Dobby who'd tried to injure him in the past rather than the crabby Kreacher) and dropping in on Luna while he was at it.

Also, Sirius came along, so it was more like the two of them visiting Ottery St. Catchpole as a whole rather than anything else.

Still, it was a nice day.

* * *

"You don't know how much of a nightmare it's been, these last couple of weeks," Ron told Harry earnestly.

"Why's that?" Harry asked, looking up at The Burrow and then around in case he could see the reason why it might be a nightmare.

It wasn't guaranteed, exactly, but sometimes with magic things were obvious like that. Maybe a Dementor had moved in next door, for example, though Harry couldn't imagine why.

Perhaps it was something to do with the Housing Market. Uncle Vernon always complained about the Housing Market, which was either going down (which left him grumbling) or going up (which left him grumbling in an almost identical but presumably distinct way).

"It's because of Fred and George," Ron explained. "The first few weeks of summer they were doing, well, stuff – you know, homework, or inventing, the kind of thing they do – but then _someone_ pointed out that they're of age now and get to cast magic over the summer."

Harry asked what, to him, was the obvious question. "If they weren't able to cast magic over the summer before, how have they been inventing?"

"It's all Potions, or something," Ron shrugged. "I think? But they did their Apparition tests, and they've got good enough that they can do it in _Animagus_ form. So now they keep randomly appearing to mess with people."

"It sounds like it's a good thing that Apparating is blocked in Hogwarts," Harry summarized.

"Yeah, I think that's going to be the best place to get peace," Ron agreed.

"Maybe that's something I need to work on," Bill suggested, coming and sitting down on the lawn next to them.

"What, peace?" Ron asked. "Don't you get enough of that in those Egyptian tombs and stuff?"

"It's not really what you'd call relaxing in there," Bill told his brother.

He leaned back on the slope, stretching – Harry noticed that Ron was still shorter than Bill was, but it was getting closer – and shrugged. "If you're not sure what's going to set off the next curse, that can be worrying… and so can some of the _nasty_ traps they set up there. I ran into one once where it counted steps. You'd be fine when you went in, fine when you checked for traps, and then days later when you were three chambers deeper you ran out of steps and – wham!"

He clapped his hands together. "Ceiling falls in."

"Wow," Harry admitted. "So why do they have all these protections and stuff? Why not just bury it all in a pile of rubble the size of a pyramid?"

"Same reason you leave your things in a Gringotts vault, really," Bill said.

Ron yawned, which Harry thought was probably because he'd heard it before. Harry hadn't, though, and found it all interesting.

"These Egyptian wizards believed that they'd be able to come back to life," the older Weasley clarified. "Maybe in a different body. So they hid their most prized treasures and magical objects away behind traps, and they'd be the only ones able to get past."

Harry was briefly struck by the disconcerting similarity to how Voldemort had come back in Professor Quirrell's body, then frowned. "So… why do you go in and help take the treasures? Aren't they safe where they are?"

"They're safe, but nobody around them is," Bill replied, propping himself up on one arm to get a better angle. "Sometimes Muggles get lost, wander into the wrong parts of pyramids, and they can have a really bad time. A year ago we found someone who'd gone through a door by accident – it was invisible to Muggles – and then got paralyzed by an ancient Body Bind curse. Poor chap had to go to the Hypatia hospital in Alexandria for a few months."

Harry winced, not having thought of it that way.

It sounded sort of like Bill's job was a bit like what Indiana Jones did, in the films and stuff, but also a bit like bomb disposal.

And some proper archaeology, too.

"The other part of it is that we don't really know all the magical tricks the Ancient Egyptians did," Bill continued. "That's why I had to do Arithmancy – you don't just break the curses, you study them and pull them to bits and see how they did stuff. Most of it's not really useful – there's this one spell which makes a glow completely unrelated to _Lumos_, only it's got twelve syllables and it's five times fainter – but sometimes you get good stuff."

Harry nodded, thinking that that part of it sounded interesting as well.

He could see why someone would go into Curse-Breaking as a career, even if it didn't quite feel like the sort of thing he'd go for.

It wasn't anything _bad_ about the career, really, it was just that Harry felt like he wouldn't be able to fully trust his co-workers. Not because of who they were – he hadn't even met them, except possibly Bill – but he felt like he'd never be entirely able to shake the image of them sneaking into a _dragon's_ den and taking a _dragon's_ hoard.

It was silly – there was only one dragon's hoard in the world, as far as Harry knew, and it was in a tent somewhere in Greater London – but you had to think about these things. Or possibly find some other way to make a decision.

Then Harry's thoughts were interrupted as Trouble and Strife appeared overhead in a twin _crack_ sound, dropped balloons, and vanished again. Harry shielded himself with his wing, which sent the water from the balloon splashing everywhere except on the rest of him, and Ron let out a high-pitched yelp before shouting that he'd turn Fred and George into a _stole_.

Really, for people who were Of Age (even if in the Magical world that meant seventeen, which explained why the Triwizard Tournament had been for those seventeen years of age and older), Fred and George weren't acting like it. Though, then again, neither did Sirius sometimes.

* * *

About halfway through the month of August, Harry woke up suddenly in the middle of the night.

He blinked for a moment, thinking over the idea that had woken him up to see if it actually made sense, then scrabbled for a piece of notepaper and a pen to write it down before he forgot.

It wasn't anything to do with any of the books he'd been reading recently, except in a sort of tangential way, so Harry thought it must have been one of those times when an idea sort of fizzed away in the back of your mind for months before finally all coming into a single coherent shape at once.

Down it went onto the paper, written in a set of bullet points so it would be easy to understand even if he _did_ forget in the morning, and Harry looked at it to make extra sure that – if he did have to rely on it – it'd actually make sense.

It did look like it, and Harry wrote it all down a second time in case the first note went missing.

Then, because he was now feeling entirely too awake, he got the book he'd been reading before bed and settled down on his blanket (which was on his hoard) to read until he got back to sleep.

As names for dragons went, Windrider was quite a good one, and it was good for dragon representation that she was the title character. He didn't think the trick she'd done of flying over a magic barrier would work in the real world, though, because with so many broomsticks around it seemed like someone would already have thought of that.

* * *

The idea was still there in the morning, so Harry wrote a letter to Dumbledore saying that he thought he'd worked out something to help with one of their puzzles.

He sent Hedwig off with it, sending her from Dogwarts because it was closer to Hogwarts, but the moment that she was in the air she turned around and flew back into the house.

Confused, Harry followed, and found his snowy owl perched next to the Floo powder with an expectant set to her beak.

"Oh, he's in London?" Harry asked, and got a pleased beak snap.

"I've known some smart owls in my time," Sirius told Harry, as Harry got the Floo powder and stoked up the fire a little. "But that one's sort of intimidating."

"Grimmauld Place! I think she's meant to be," Harry replied.

Hedwig vanished through the flames, and Harry went over to sit down.

"Apparently that one we watched on Thursday was the end of the series, for the Crystal Maze," Sirius told Harry, after a few minutes of companionable silence.

"Really?" Harry asked, then shrugged. "I suppose we'll just have to record the next series, or something."

He did quite like the program, which felt sort of like the sort of thing they might play at Hogwarts – revolving around solving puzzles or doing tasks inside a time limit. It was almost like a non-magical Triwizard Tournament, only with less dragons.

Since dragons improved everything, this made it a _worse_ Triwizard tournament, but you couldn't have everything from telly.

* * *

Dumbledore, it seemed, was quite interested, and the next day Harry and Sirius went up to visit him in the Headmaster's Office.

The password this time was 'Frosties', which quite surprised Harry as he would have expected that to be a breakfast if anything.

"Sirius, Harry, it is always a pleasure to see you both," Dumbledore informed them. "Perhaps I should ask for a photograph, so I can see you much more often. Now, I believe that you had something to discuss, Harry?"

"I sort of realized it at night, Professor," Harry explained. "You know the Resurrection Stone?"

"I do, Harry, though I must caution you that I have decided – based on your own advice, of course – that it is far too dangerous to use," Dumbledore said, much more gravely. Which was appropriate, Harry supposed. "The story about the Three Brothers is quite clear that it would be a tremendously bad idea to become too lost in grief to pay attention to the world of the living, and after much thought I have decided that – in my case, as in many others – it would be best to heed the warning."

There was a little catch in Dumbledore's voice which made Harry feel terribly sad. It reminded him of how Belgarath had felt for the thousands of years when he had thought his wife gone for good, perhaps.

"But that's not what Harry wants to use the Stone for," Sirius said, taking up the thread of discussion after a moment of silence.

"That's right," Harry agreed. "I was thinking about it, and I realized that you can't really be lost in grief if you're talking to a ghost from so long ago – and who doesn't matter to you as much – so that you don't really have any connection to them. You could ask Ravenclaw what happened to her diadem, or Gryffindor what happened to his sword, and both of those would be fine. Right?"

Dumbledore seemed quite surprised by Harry's suggestion, and sat back in his chair.

"It is quite a remarkable suggestion," he said, after a long pause, and chuckled. "Perhaps it had to be someone who had not grown up with the story to realize it."

"It'd still have to be used really carefully," Harry cautioned. "Because it's one of those things that's powerful enough you _need_ to be really careful. But… let's see, we sorted out the diary, the ring and the locket, we know Riddle got Hufflepuff's Cup but we don't know where it is, we know Gryffindor's Hat is right here and it's fine, and we don't know where Ravenclaw's Diadem and Gryffindor's Sword are."

"And don't forget that the diary was Riddle's diary, not something from one of the Founders of Hogwarts," Sirius reminded them. "And we don't know how many others he made, either. There could be a tap in a Muggle bathroom somewhere in Slough that has a bit of Riddle's soul in it."

"I have given this much thought, and I do not think such would be the case," Dumbledore told them both. "You see, I think everything Tom made into a Horcrux had to be meaningful in some way, and so were the places where he hid them. The locket – an object from the Founders of Hogwarts, and left in a cave where he did some early and evil thing. The ring – an inheritance from Salazar Slytherin, no less, and left in the ancestral home of the Gaunts. The diary – the proof of his heritage, and left with a pure-blooded supporter."

"Pardon?" Sirius asked. "I must have missed hearing about that."

"Perhaps you did," Dumbledore said, spreading his hands. "It was a while ago I was able to gain a memory of the argument in the book shop, as part of the trial of Mr. Lockhart, and in exploring it closely I was able to catch that it was Lucius who placed the book in with Harry's purchases. I must confess however that I was rather busy that week, and it may have slipped my mind."

"I sort of feel like saying thank-you to him," Harry admitted. "It would be a very strange thing to do to a Horcrux to give it to me, wouldn't it?"

"If he knew what it was, indeed it would be," Dumbledore agreed. "So perhaps he did not, or perhaps he did, and either way perhaps we should not ask."

* * *

Working out how to actually do what Harry was thinking of took quite a lot of time, and quite a lot of discussion as well.

Dumbledore said that it would be terribly bad manners to interrupt someone who had moved on to the next great adventure without an extremely good reason, and while he agreed that helping to sort out Tom Riddle _would_ be an extremely good reason it was hard indeed for him to think of any others.

"You see, Harry," he said, "I find that when there is something I would very much like to do, and that I know is not something I should be doing whenever I wish, I must place some very strict rules indeed upon myself so that I do not give in to temptation."

"That sounds like a good idea, Professor," Harry admitted.

Really, they weren't even sure if using it _once_ would be safe, but it was the sort of thing that seemed like it would be worth the risk.

Sirius had been taking notes, and eventually he put his quill down. "Okay, so… we don't have a reason to ask Salazar Slytherin anything, and even if we did we wouldn't be sure he'd tell the truth."

Harry nodded.

"And Helga Hufflepuff only had the Cup, and we know that Voldemort got his hands on it, but we don't know what he did with it after that. So nobody we could bring back with the Stone would be able to help," Sirius went on.

"Indeed," Dumbledore sighed. "I very much doubt that Hepzibah Smith would be able to tell us what became of her erstwhile possessions after her death, though of course we have dealt with Slytherin's Locket already and all we lack of Hufflepuff's Cup is a location. But that leaves the two we are sure of."

Harry was quite impressed by how everyone was enunciating the capital letters in words like 'Locket' and 'Cup'.

Sirius tapped the parchment. "Gryffindor's Sword and Ravenclaw's Diadem. We need to ask Gryffindor where his Sword went, and Ravenclaw what happened to her Diadem, and if _they_ don't know where the Sword or the Diadem are we follow the trail until we find someone who _does_ know."

"What's that?" the Sorting Hat asked, jumping a little on his shelf.

He yawned. "Terribly sorry, wasn't expecting to be needed for nearly another month. I'm having trouble with one of the rhymes, and if I don't sort this out before September I may have to resort to alliteration."

"I am sorry, my dear Hat," Dumbledore apologized. "We must remember not to discuss such weighty matters while you are composing."

"No, no, do please continue," the Hat requested. "It's really quite fortunate, you know – I can answer one of your questions right away! Why, Gryffindor's Sword is to be found nowhere else than right inside my brim!"

Thinking about it, both then and later, Harry was quite sure it was one of the only times he'd ever seen Dumbledore quite speechless.

"How does _that_ work?" Sirius asked.

"It's all about great need, my good fellow," the Hat replied brightly. "If a truly brave Gryffindor is in great need, all he has to do is ask for help and Gryffindor's Sword appears!"

His pointy tip dipped as the whole of his fabric creased in a considering frown. "Of course, it _does_ tend to be quite rare that someone is actually _wearing_ me and asks for help."

"Well… the good news is that we know Riddle didn't get Gryffindor's Sword?" Harry suggested.

"An excellent point indeed, Harry, an excellent point indeed," Dumbledore agreed, his aplomb seeming to largely be restored. "Though it does remind me that we still do not know how many Horcruxes Tom actually made… but I believe that we can go ahead and ask Rowena Ravenclaw."

He rose from his chair and walked over to a cabinet. A tap with his wand and it opened, revealing a small box, and he took the box out before placing it on the table.

Leaning over it, he cleared his throat. "Matthias broom-handle." There was a faint _click_, and the box opened.

"Matthias broom-handle?" Sirius repeated, sounding honestly offended as Dumbledore took out the Resurrection Stone. "Where did _that_ come from?"

"It would be terribly irresponsible of me to use a password that made any kind of sense," Dumbledore replied with a smile. "Now, then… I believe that you are supposed to turn the stone over three times…"

Over it went, and then stopped.

"Did it work?" Sirius asked.

"Ignosce," Dumbledore requested, holding up his hand, then turned his attention to Sirius. "I am dreadfully sorry, Sirius, Harry – it appears that those summoned by the Stone are only visible to the one who has summoned them."

He smiled quite brightly. "Fortunately, it seems that Rowena Ravenclaw and I share the language of Latin. I would say she also speaks Gaelic, and English, but alas those tongues are not the same as they were in her day; Latin, however, is all but unchanged."

"That's good," Harry said, thinking about how hard it would have been to carry on the conversation if it had been someone else who'd tried using the Stone.

"Gratias ago tibi, quia in tempore non tuo," Dumbledore went on, and now Harry could see he was looking at someone a little to the right. "Ego enim ex vena Scolae Hogwarts."

He listened, then spread his hands in a shrug. "Vae, Gryffindor."

"This might take a while," Sirius observed.

"Est quaestio magni momenti est," Dumbledore continued. "Si forte quaeritur de diadema regni tui?"

Harry recognized what sounded like the word 'diadem', and since diadem was the sort of old word that sounded like it was from Latin then that probably meant Dumbledore had asked the important question.

It was sort of odd having to rely on someone translating later to know what the answer to a question was. Maybe it was how everyone else felt dealing with his occasional conversations with other dragons, basilisks, or (presumably, though he'd never tried) actual normal snakes.

* * *

Dumbledore talked to Rowena Ravenclaw for another few minutes, sounding at different times interested, melancholy and conciliatory, then held out his hand and dropped the stone. It clattered to the floor, and after contemplating it Dumbledore sat back down.

Nobody said anything for a bit.

"How very strange an experience," Dumbledore said, eventually. "It is a great pity we cannot write it up for inclusion in the best magical journals, as I suspect Tom would notice. And if he knew that we were aware of his Horcruxes, well, I do not think it would go well for us."

"He wants to keep his Horcruxes in important places," Harry said, following along, and picked up the stone from the floor to put it back on the desk. "But that's not necessarily something he _has_ to do, and he might hide them somewhere we could never find in the first place if he knew we'd found some of them."

"My thought exactly," Dumbledore confirmed.

"So what about the Diadem?" Sirius checked.

"Alas, Rowena did not know – or perhaps I should say _does_ not know – where it is," Dumbledore told them. "Nor for that matter did she know about Empress, though I suppose that should not be surprising... it took Empress a considerable amount of time to grow to her present size, after all."

He steepled his long fingers together. "It seems that her diadem was stolen many years before she passed away, by her daughter Helena Ravenclaw. Rowena said that she concealed the loss from even her closest friends, and certainly did not try to retrieve it, but on her deathbed she sent a knight to retrieve Helena so that she could see her daughter one last time."

Dumbledore looked down at the desk. "To her knowledge, neither of them came back to Hogwarts. Certainly they had not returned by the time of her demise, which came about a week later."

Harry had to blink away tears.

The sadness that Dumbledore was describing was something that had happened about a thousand years ago. The only person left alive from that time was Empress, who had probably known little to nothing about it – if Salazar hadn't known then there wasn't really a way for Empress to know, after all – but it still seemed fresh, somehow.

"And I thought _my_ family had problems," Sirius muttered. "So… I'm going to _guess_ that we should ask Helena Ravenclaw? Or the knight?"

"Helena Ravenclaw seems the best option, to me," Dumbledore said, after considering. "She is the one who absconded with the Diadem, and she is also the one for whom we have a name. If it transpires that the Diadem is still wherever it is she left it, then we can simply retrieve it ourselves, test it and then – assuming of course that the Diadem is _not_ a Horcrux and does not require an encounter with Harry's rather tremendous inflammatory capabilities – count ourselves grateful to have the Diadem back."

He paused. "I do believe I have said the word Diadem far too many times in a short space of time."

* * *

Despite knowing what they were going to do next, they didn't get straight on with activating the Resurrection Stone again.

Dumbledore had a House-Elf by the name of Kayley bring them up some tea and biscuits, and the biscuits arrived with quite an unusual appearance – whichever elf had baked them had done so to make it look as though they had made a plate of half-a-dozen breakfast buns, complete with a little fondant egg in the middle.

Harry pronounced them to be both clever and delicious, and Dumbledore looked as pleased as if he'd made them himself.

"I shall have to inform the baker you approve," he smiled. "I do so like a little experimentation in the food we eat. It adds colour to the day, and brings delight to the tongue."

Once the biscuits were gone, however, Dumbledore rose again.

"I fear we may once more need my facility with the fine language of Latin," he explained, picking up the stone. "Let me see, now… Helena Ravenclaw, daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw."

He turned the stone over in his hand, and then there was a sudden blur of silvery light and the Grey Lady of Ravenclaw Tower was stood there.

She looked around, seeming quite confused, and Dumbledore frowned.

"This is most peculiar," he said.

"That's the Grey Lady, isn't it?" Sirius asked, just ahead of Harry who was about to ask the same question. "Is _she_ Helena Ravenclaw?"

"Where did you hear that name?" the Grey Lady demanded, shocked. "What's happening?"

"We're trying to find out how many of the Founders' artefacts Tom Riddle got to," Harry tried to explain. "We know he got Slytherin's – _Salazar_ Slytherin's Locket and Ring, and Helga Hufflepuff's Cup."

It felt like it was a good idea to use the full names, right now, because of course Helena Ravenclaw had _known_ Salazar Slytherin and Helga Hufflepuff, and perhaps whoever the sons and daughters of Helga and Salazar (and Godric) had been, so using the full names would keep things less confusing.

"Tom Riddle," the Grey Lady repeated, putting more venom into the words than Harry thought even Empress could have managed. "Yes, I know who you mean. And… he wore a ring when I knew him, yes. It could have been Slytherin's."

"Harry-" Sirius began, but Harry saw Dumbledore make a wordless gesture.

"If he got to the Diadem, then we need to destroy it," Harry said. "Or, we almost certainly need to destroy it. We've already done it to Slytherin's Ring and his Locket, because Riddle did something terribly evil to them."

"I hid my mother's diadem in a hollow tree in Albania," the Grey Lady said, and Harry's ears pricked up. "But when I talked to him… he seemed to understand. He was flattering… he told me so many things about how I had felt... it seemed like nobody else who had wanted the Diadem had wanted it for the right reasons, but that he _did_."

"You would not be the only person Tom has tricked," Dumbledore said, sorrowfully. "Not the first, nor the last. He convinced the previous Headmaster of this school he had saved it from a peril of his own making, and talked a man I thought I knew into surrendering his own body to aid in Tom's plans."

"Do you know where the Diadem went?" Harry asked, and his heart sank when the Grey Lady shook her head.

"I only know that he took it from the tree near where I died," she answered. "I died far from Hogwarts, murdered by the Baron when my mother sent him after me, and he died but a few minutes later to his own sword. As we both died there, we can haunt it; as we both lived in Hogwarts once, we can haunt this place. But I could not follow Riddle elsewhere, and even when he was in Hogwarts afterwards I did not want to see him."

Her ghostly fists clenched. "He was too much a reminder of how I had been tricked."

"So it _could_ be in Hogwarts," Harry said, thinking out loud and frowning. "And – I know – wait, um, when did he find that out?"

"He was in his seventh year," the Grey Lady answered. "He took it less than a month after he left Hogwarts."

"It couldn't be in the Chamber of Secrets, then," Harry decided. "The only ones he had while he was in Hogwarts were the Locket and the Diary, and we got to both of those."

"Didn't you say he was in Hogwarts afterwards?" Sirius asked the Grey Lady.

"Tom came back to Hogwarts but once," Dumbledore told them. "He was applying for a job, though of course I refused. I do not believe he entered the Chamber of Secrets either before or afterwards."

"That is the second time you have mentioned the Chamber of Secrets," the Grey Lady said, and Harry sort of idly thought that she seemed to have given up her usual near-total silence.

Perhaps this was the most that had happened in the last several decades of her death.

"I've talked to the Basilisk inside," Harry explained. "We're keeping her sort of secret for now, but she's just glad to have someone to talk to. Riddle made her do things she regrets as well."

"It's just occurred to me," Sirius contributed. "He could have hidden either the Cup or the Diadem in the castle during his visit for that interview. And he _could_ have got to the Chamber – we'd need to ask Empress to look, for that one."

Harry thought she was asleep, and said so, then asked whether the House-Elves could have a look.

"Hogwarts has been turned upside down many times by students seeking the Diadem," Dumbledore said, considering. "But it is true that the House-Elves know more about the castle than anyone else – even I, remarkable as it may seem."

"What about me?" Sirius asked. "I helped make a _map_ of the castle!"

"Indeed you did," Dumbledore smiled. "But, alas, I cannot accept it as Charms course work because you did not hand it in in time."

He considered, then raised his voice. "Kayley?"

The same House-Elf from before appeared in a _pop_.

"Would you be so kind as to ask all the Elves to search Hogwarts top to bottom?" he asked. "They will be looking for Ravenclaw's Diadem, or Hufflepuff's Cup."

Kayley nodded briskly, and vanished with another _pop_.

Twelve seconds later she appeared again, this time with her hands raised high holding a glittering diadem. "Found it, Headmaster Sir! It was being in the Come And Go Room!"

"...I'm almost annoyed," Sirius groaned.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, in a little seaside cove, Dumbledore placed Ravenclaw's Diadem on the soft sands.

"There is one thing that occurs to me," Sirius said, looking at it.

"What's that?" Harry asked. "A way we can get away without destroying it?"

Sirius shook his head. "No, no luck there. More that this now means we know where Riddle hid the one in the castle… so where else is important enough to him to hide the Cup?"

He looked at Dumbledore. "His orphanage?"

"An excellent idea, Sirius, but fruitless," Dumbledore informed him. "I have checked the building, and nothing of the sort was to be found."

He waved towards the diadem. "But we had best be sure we get on with our business, as it would not do to go to tea with our task still undone."

Harry nodded, and took a deep breath. It had been a while since he used Fiendfyre, and he spent a long moment trying to remember everything he'd learned about controlling it.

It took long enough for him to be sure that he had to let out the deep breath and take a second one, but once he was sure he took a half-unconscious step back and reared up with his wings spread.

"_Infernus!"_ he roared, sending forth a billowing jet of orange-yellow flame, and it shot right into the middle of the Diadem. It was engulfed for a long second until Harry released his fire, and then it was surrounded by burning sand and fused glass.

Harry wondered if the attack had worked at all, as the Diadem didn't look much more than scorched, then he noticed the ichor leaking out of it. Then it broke cleanly in half, issuing forth the faint and ghostly shriek of pain that always seemed to come with the destruction of a Horcrux.

"Fine work, Harry," Dumbledore told him, and stepped forwards with his wand raised high. A jet of bluebell flames covered the Diadem, the sand and the glass, and Dumbledore waited for a moment before flicking his wand and dispelling the now-diluted Fiendfyre. "Fine work indeed."

"So that is the end of my mother's diadem," the Grey Lady said.

She looked different this far from the castle, sort of washed-out, and she was staring at the peculiar fused mess of glass that Harry had made out of the beach.

It was sort of interesting, really. It looked like the actual core of his fire breath had missed the diadem itself, instead drilling a tunnel several inches deep into the sand.

"What do you think you will be doing now, if I might be so bold as to ask?" Dumbledore said.

The Grey Lady looked sort of torn, then came to a decision. "I will stay, I think," she told him.

Harry hadn't known there was a choice, and said so, and she put a finger to her lips.

"You will find out in your own due time," she replied, and drifted off back towards the castle.

Harry watched her go, puzzled, then turned his attention to the splash where his fire had hit. His claws got easily underneath the hardened surface, letting him break it away in fragments, and he dug around a bit before pulling out a tube of melted glass.

"Do you think I could have that, Harry?" Dumbledore asked. "It would go quite well among the many things in my office – at least with that one I would know what it was."

Sirius made a strangled coughing noise.

"You don't know what they are, Professor?" Harry said, quite surprised.

"I am sure they do many useful things, and perhaps even a few useless ones," Dumbledore told him. "But it would be nice to have some glass to enliven the picture. Of course, the choice is yours."

* * *

That evening, Harry wondered about whether it meant anything for how dragon psychology meant that he'd not felt even a twinge about giving the glass away.

Was it because it wasn't precious? Because he could make more any time he really wanted?

Because it hadn't yet become _his?_

Whichever it was, it was at least clear that his version of dragon psychology was quite different to the version of dragon psychology applied to Nora, Sally, Ollie and Gary. All four of them had been quite pleased to see him, and the three younger dragons had been full of excitement as they asked him to watch them fly – and in formation, no less.

Now with two years of Care Of Magical Creatures behind him, Harry could say quite firmly that the dragonets were _much_ better behaved with one another than normal dragons were with other normal dragons.

Which was nice. Even if their _best_ behaviour wasn't quite up to Nora.

* * *

It was almost the end of summer when the letter finally arrived with Harry's book list. There were only a few this year, including a new Defence textbook (at last) and a book on advanced runic combinations by Edda Carver.

It also came with a shiny Prefect badge, which Harry carefully put somewhere he wouldn't lose it, and two extra sheets of parchment.

The first, which was addressed to 'Prefect', said that Prefects were to go to the Prefect Carriage on the Hogwarts Express to get instructions from the Head Boy and Girl.

Harry hoped he wouldn't have to stay there all journey, but then again Percy had been on the train at various points in Harry's first few years – and he couldn't imagine what they could possibly be told that would take the full seven or eight _hours_ it took to go to Hogwarts, so he was sort of optimistic about it.

The second, which was addressed to 'Harry' specifically and which was signed by Dumbledore, told him that there would be several new non-human students at Hogwarts this coming year – one of whom was Isaac, the griffin that Harry had met in Care Of Magical Creatures, along with a vampire by the name of Melody and a second member of June's pack (this time with the rather more prosaic name of Matthew). Dumbledore expressed his hope that Harry would find the time to make them all comfortable, and said that he was sure that Harry would have done so anyway but that this way Harry would know that Dumbledore would appreciate it.

It was quite a lot of responsibility to think about, but Harry did have to admit that it was probably what he'd have done anyway. It didn't stop it being imposing, like how being told that you _had_ to do something was even if you were planning on doing it.

Still, now Harry knew what shopping to get, and that was important.

And it meant he knew what to do on September the First. That was _more _important.

* * *

AN:

It's all about who you ask.

The Cup, on the other hand, is going to be harder to work out. Only a couple of people know where it is, all in Azkaban (or in Voldemort's case mostly dead), and once you know that's only half the battle…

Oh, also, Harry has a badge.


	68. Dragon In Training

Now that he was a Prefect, Harry thought it was best if he set a good example.

What it actually meant to set a good example in this case was a bit unclear, admittedly, but after thinking about it Harry decided that the most important parts would be to arrive at the station nice and early, and to keep an eye out for anyone who was looking a bit lost or confused.

That decided, Harry set off at about half past eight in the morning on September the First, waving a temporary goodbye to Sirius and Kreacher – Sirius just mumbled, because it was quite early in the day as far as he was concerned – before spreading his wings and flying towards Kings Cross.

* * *

Harry had been careful today, and worn his T-shirt with a dragon on it that he'd got up in Skye years ago. It still fit, though it was a bit tight and it probably wouldn't fit after his next growth spurt, but he thought it was a good idea.

He hadn't even reached the entrance to Platform Nine And Three Quarters when it turned out to be a very good idea indeed. Someone said "Dragon!", drawing Harry's attention, and when he looked around he saw an eleven year old boy and an eight year old boy walking next to someone who was almost certainly their father.

The dad was pushing a trolley with a trunk, and there was a cat snoozing on top of the trunk.

"A dragon?" the dad repeated. "Oh, on his shirt? Josh, that doesn't mean he's-"

"No, dad, you're not listening!" the eight year old repeated.

Harry had a moment of uncertainty over whether he should just lead them through the portal or explain, then decided to tell them what was going on.

"It's nice to meet you," he said, offering a paw to shake. "I'm Harry Potter."

"Richard Martin," the dad replied. "This is my oldest, Mickey, and this is Josh."

Mickey seemed to be quite astonished by Harry, which Harry supposed was fair enough if he was right and both boys were magical. It had to be an unusual sight to see a dragon in the middle of Kings Cross Station, even if you did know about magic now.

Harry put a talon to his muzzle, in a shush gesture. "I am a dragon, but it's a secret," he told the two boys. "I'm very well disguised."

"But we can _see_-" Josh began.

"You're what?" Mr. Martin interrupted, sounding amazed. "I couldn't even tell – I still can't. That's very impressive."

"It's magic," Harry explained. "And because Josh can see it, I know he's magical too, so he'll be coming to Hogwarts in a few years. But remember, it's all a secret, so don't tell anyone."

Josh looked stunned, then nodded meekly.

Harry nodded in the rough direction of the doorway to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. "The train's this way. You're nice and early."

* * *

While it _was_ nice to be able to help someone, once he was on the platform Harry wondered if maybe he should come in through the train entrance for his final two years.

The T-shirt had helped, because it meant there was an easy explanation for why someone would point at him and call out that he was a dragon, but it might not be _enough_ of an explanation. There was meant to be magic around Kings Cross that made it easier for people to overlook that sort of thing, but… it was still something he had to be worried about.

For the next hour or so Harry stayed on the platform, keeping a look out for his friends and for anyone else who it might be a good idea to speak to.

He did catch sight of Isaac, who was Apparated in by Professor Sinistra, and who appeared to already have some bags that were bigger on the inside because he didn't really have much stuff with him. Just a pair of what were sort of like panniers, slung under his wings, and a bandolier sort of thing with a pouch on it.

That distracted Harry into wondering whether a First-Year could actually carry all the things they needed in bags like those _without_ expansion charms, then he remembered things like the potions kit and telescope and collapsible cauldron and decided that they probably couldn't.

Dean was the first of Harry's close circle of friends to come through the portal, then Neville, and the three of them spent a bit of time talking about what was it was going to be like in Fifth Year.

Neville pointed out that it was the last year they _had_ to do the core subjects, which was going to be interesting, while Dean said that this year the sports were going to be back to normal. He also said that the Irons hadn't done very well so far this year, but it was only four games in and they'd had a difficult starting line up. With Tony Cottee back they should be doing better.

Harry tried his best to decipher what Dean had said, and concluded that it was probably about football.

Then Ron came through the gate to Kings Cross, took one look at Harry, and slumped.

"Thank _Merlin_," he said.

Harry looked faintly puzzled, and behind Ron the rest of the Weasleys came through the gate as well. Ginny, Fred, George, and then Mr and Mrs Weasley to bid their children farewell.

"I knew Hermione was a Prefect," Ron explained. "And I got the chance to ask Dean and Nev, but both of them weren't and by then it was too late to send out Pigwigeon again. And last night I was imagining Seamus being the other Gryffindor Prefect."

"I'd be a fan of that," Fred said. "That'd be fun."

"That is pretty much exactly why I was worried," Ron countered.

"I'll have to be in the meeting at the start of the train ride," Harry warned. "Not sure how long it's going to be, but we know it can't be all train ride… I was going to leave my stuff with you guys, and then come back once the meeting was over."

"No problem for me," Ron decided. "Hey, Nev, you want to make sure Fred and George don't prank Harry's stuff, or should I?"

"Don't make us invent a trick acorn," George warned.

* * *

Hermione arrived a few minutes later, and they all got on the train to find a compartment. Fred and George duly expanded it, making enough space for everyone and plenty more besides – Neville said that it was good to have a train compartment you could use for exercise – and Harry quickly set up his tent to go in and change into his robes.

That way he could put his Prefect badge neatly on the robes to make it easier to tell.

With that done, though, there was still a wait of nearly another hour before the train left. Harry would have said that that was a downside of setting an example, but everyone else had shown up early as well and it wasn't like he had a lack of books to read.

Today's one was a Redwall book, _Outcast of Redwall_, which started in a slightly unusual way by talking about a kestrel instead of about Redwall. He was sure it was going somewhere, though, and when a badger with a big mace turned up it felt nice and familiar.

More of their friends filtered into the compartment or looked in and waved as Harry read – with occasional pauses in his reading to say hello – and it wasn't until the train trembled and started moving that Harry finally put aside his book.

"We'd better get going," Hermione said, thinking the same thing. "It hopefully won't be very long."

"See you," Ron waved, then looked back down at the board between him and Neville. "And, finally, if they break through then use the rooks. Ready?"

His little chess men all nodded and waved.

"Go!" Neville ordered, and all thirty-two chess pieces got moving at once. The pawns crashed into one another, struggling and bashing, and then Neville's two white knights broke through the melee only to get countercharged by Ron's black knights and bludgeoned by a bishop into the bargain.

"What opening gambit is _that?_" Tanisis asked, looking over with a frown.

"Agincourt, I think," Ron replied, as his queen did a judo throw to one of Neville's rooks. "I think we're both being French though."

* * *

On the way along the train to the prefect's carriage, Harry fielded a couple of questions from the younger students he ran into. Someone wanted to know the way to the bathroom (Harry was able to point him in the right direction, which was nice) and then two different people asked if he was really a dragon _and_ a prefect.

Harry said that yes, he was both, but that the prefect thing was new. Dennis Creevey sounded like he was slightly surprised to discover it worked that way, but that might just have been how Dennis sounded about everything.

Most of the rest of what they heard on the way, though, was congratulations. It was kind of nice, really, and it gave Harry a warm feeling as he and Hermione reached the door to the prefect's carriage.

Then he saw what was inside.

Really, Harry shouldn't have assumed anything less. While most of the compartments on the train were sort of mundane, only really made anything unusual because they _were_ compartments instead of the sort of seating you got on British Rail trains, this carriage was a complete carriage and astonishingly luxurious.

There were a bit more than a dozen armchairs scattered throughout the room, and the walls held at least ten fine gilt-edged paintings – all of them enchanted and magical, so that in one a horse reared and pranced while in the next one along a ship fought its way through a squall. There were some stuffed animal heads on the walls, which was a bit odd, and every bit of the wall that wasn't covered by plush red curtains or paintings or animal heads was panelled in deep, rich mahogany.

Harry saw a plant pot in one corner occupied by a large yucca, and another corner of the room was the entrance to a white-tiled bathroom that seemed to have an actual bath in it.

"Harry, Hermione!" Cedric called. "It's nice to see you both."

He got up and shook Hermione's hand, then Harry's paw. Harry noticed that Cedric's P badge from last year had gone, replaced by one that announced that he was Head Boy.

"Oh, congratulations!" he told the older boy, then noticed the Head Girl was there as well – Patricia Stimpson, he thought was her name. "And you as well, of course."

"Shall we skip the congratulations?" Draco drawled. "Or we'll still be making them when we're in Scotland."

Looking around again, this time at the people in the armchairs instead of the décor in the carriage, Harry mentally listed off the people he recognized. There were all the prefects who were now in their sixth and seventh years, who hadn't changed – Remus said that that _could_ happen if someone misbehaved enough, but apparently nobody had – and then as well as Draco there was Pansy Parkinson from Slytherin, who eyed Harry in a slightly odd way.

Ernie Macmillan and Padma Patil were there as well, for Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw respectively, but there were still two missing.

"Harry," Hermione said, sounding confused. "Look."

Harry followed where she was pointing, and had to do a double-take as well.

There was a television in the corner of the room. It wasn't a very big one, and it was sitting there on a little table, but it was definitely a television – and it was working, showing the blue and white text and numbers of Ceefax.

"That turned up last year," Cedric said. "I think the driver said that he'd heard from Dumbledore that some Muggle things worked around magic, but it only works while the train's moving and it goes off when we're nearly at the station."

He walked over and gave it a poke with his finger. "About all it really does is say a bit of whatever the Muggle news is."

"Well, I think we can fix that," Hermione decided. "Where's the remote?"

The seventh year Ravenclaw prefect, Marcus Turner, snorted at that. "Good luck. I looked last year and I think the driver didn't know you needed one."

* * *

Anthony Goldstein arrived about three or four minutes after Harry and Hermione did, and the final new prefect – Hannah Abbott – arrived a little after that, about when they were into what Harry was fairly sure qualified as the outskirts of London.

They weren't yet at the bit where it was just fields going past on both sides, into what Harry thought was the Green Belt, but it wasn't far.

"All right," Cedric said, once everyone was sitting down. "First of all, welcome to all eight of the new prefects. A lot of this is going to be for your benefit because you haven't done it before, but I'm sure I don't have to remind you to pay attention."

Since he was thinking about that sort of thing, Harry noticed that Cedric had managed to remind him while saying he didn't have to remind them. It was quite a clever way to do it without making them feel like Cedric was being condescending.

"Being a prefect means that you have to try and keep things under control among the other students," Cedric informed them. "That doesn't mean stopping people having fun, but it means making sure they follow the rules – and helping people out if they have a problem, too."

Harry put up a paw, and Cedric nodded. "Go ahead, Harry."

"I wanted to ask about the Weasley Twins," Harry began, and there was a ripple of laughter through the carriage.

"Believe me, I totally understand," Patricia told him. "Just do your best."

"If it's just the usual pranks back and forth with the Smiths, you don't even really _need_ to give them detentions," Cedric added. "Obviously don't tell them that, but it was decided at least two years ago that otherwise some prefects would just be spending every evening in detention with them."

He snapped his fingers. "Which reminds me about the things you can do and the things that come with that. Prefects can't give house points, but they can take them unless it's from another prefect. If they feel that points should be awarded, or if a prefect_ has_ broken the rules, thenthey can ask a teacher to review the situation. Prefects _can_ assign detentions, but if a teacher isn't available then the prefect has to supervise the detention themselves."

Hannah Abbott put her hand up this time, and asked whether that was because of concerns about people abusing authority. Cedric confirmed that it was, and warned that if they _did_ abuse their powers then they might end up losing their positions as prefects, then moved on to the patrols.

It turned out that the patrols thing wasn't as bad as Harry had been expecting. There were two prefects doing it on each night for the first two hours after curfew, and each term there was a schedule sorted out. Twenty-one of the twenty-four prefects would be on the schedule, doing two weeks of patrols and then one week without them, which Harry went over in his head and decided probably _did_ work out, while the other three prefects – and the Head Boy or Girl, if they hadn't already been a prefect, but that didn't apply this year – would be kind of filling in for if someone couldn't do their patrol for some other reason.

"We don't want to take away so much time you don't do well on your exams," Cedric clarified. "Any questions so far?"

Harry had another one, which was about what they were meant to do if there was an argument or disagreement between people from different houses. That got the answer that they were meant to ignore what house someone was from when they were doing things like handing out punishments, which was sensible enough if it could be done, and that their job was to try and handle things that _didn't_ need teachers rather than try to do everything _without_ teachers.

A few of the others had questions as well. Apparently prefects had to know where all the teachers' offices were – which was okay with Harry, he was pretty sure he already knew – and if the weather was bad they had to keep an eye on the younger students who were stuck indoors.

Once the questions were over, Patricia told them it was time for the benefits.

Harry didn't remember hearing about the Prefects' Bathroom before, but it sounded nice – the password, apparently, was 'Minty Fresh' - and Patricia also said it was usually easier to get a pass to the Restricted Section as a prefect. That sounded helpful, though Harry reminded himself that he wasn't supposed to just go in there and read everything in sight.

It wouldn't be polite.

Then they all got the passwords for their specific Houses so they could lead people to the dorms that night – Gryffindor's first password of the year was 'Swordfish', apparently – and Cedric told them that they just had to ask him if they had any questions, then said that that was it for the meeting but that they could stay in the Prefects' Carriage if they wanted.

Harry declined, since he wanted to get back to his friends (and back to his books). Hermione declined as well, but Draco got out a pack of cards and asked if anyone was interested in a bit of a game.

It sounded like Draco at least was going to be enjoying the rest of the journey. Which was nice.

* * *

On the way back through the train, Harry kept an eye out for any of the sort of trouble prefects were supposed to stop. Mostly there wasn't anything, but there were a few younger students who kept peeking into Isaac's compartment every twenty seconds – Harry counted – and by the way the young griffin looked it seemed as though they weren't giving him a moment's peace.

Harry could think of several ways to solve that, but the simplest that came to mind was just to ask the second-years politely to stop, before letting Isaac know which compartment he and Hermione were going to be in in case it happened again.

It didn't seem like the second-years would be doing it again, though. For some reason when Harry asked them politely to stop they'd looked extremely impressed, though, and promptly scurried back into their own compartment.

Maybe it was just that they hadn't thought a prefect would notice.

* * *

"So I was thinking that I should have a rune sequence for cooling around the side of the engine bell," Ron was saying, as Hermione opened the door. "Then the usual Rune stuff to make it unbreakable."

That got a nod from Tanisis, who had found her way into the compartment along with Luna during the time Harry was out, and they all looked up for long enough to say hi before going back to the discussion.

"Why would you want the cooling bit if you're going to make it unbreakable?" Neville asked, nibbling on a pasty. "Seems like melting would be, you know, breaking."

"Yeah, but I don't want this thing ending up so hot that when it lands it melts its way through the ground," Ron pointed out.

"It would be a marvellous economy, though," Luna said. "You could have one thing to explore both the moon and the centre of the Earth."

"Like a Jules Verne package holiday," Hermione added, sitting down.

Harry had to snigger.

"Meeting went all right?" Dean checked.

"Yeah, it was about duties and passwords and stuff," Harry replied. "It doesn't seem like the patrols and stuff are going to be _too_ bad."

"That's good news, at least," Dean said.

Ron then suggested that they should put a mirror into the nose of the first test rocket, and that made Harry ask how much of the rocket assembly Ron was planning on making unbreakable.

It seemed like a good point to him, because he was doing the engine nozzle bit and he _needed_ to do the fuel tank (at least if he was going to be using it to magically keep making more fuel) but if you had those two bits and you couldn't change them the rest of it would be pretty much molding a rocket around two surviving pieces every time.

"I did think of that," Ron said. "...I didn't _solve_ it, but I did think of it."

"Oh!" Neville added, rummaging next to him, and produced a small pile of food. "I got stuff from the trolley – this is yours, Hermione, and I got you some as well, Harry."

Harry was touched, and took what Neville had got for him before settling down in a corner to eat.

"What about if you make the engine and fuel tank for a really powerful rocket, and you have a thing in there that makes it less powerful?" Ginny asked. "That way you can make a new one, or change it, for each rocket. And you can make it so it gives as much power as you need."

"Nice!" Ron replied, writing that down.

* * *

Harry had sort of wondered where the Twins were (either or both sets, though mostly the Weasley ones). He'd confirmed they weren't with his luggage, or indeed in the room, and it wasn't until most of an hour later that he found out – when the door opened again, this time admitting Fred, Lee, and the in-Animagus-form George.

"That worked out great," Lee declared. "The mascot thing is definitely a plus."

"Yeah, that was twenty tests already," Fred agreed, as George jumped off his shoulder and changed in midair to land as a human.

"What have you been getting people to try?" Hermione asked, a warning note in her voice, and Harry leaned forwards a little as well – interested to see how this interacted with the Being A Prefect thing.

"Nothing they're not okay with," George assured her. "We tell all our test subjects what they're actually testing."

"Unless it would be funny," Fred said.

"Unless it would be funny," George agreed.

"And even then we make sure they know it's _a_ test," Lee completed.

"Hey!" George protested.

"We were going to make her work for fifteen minutes for that," Fred pointed out.

"Oh, yeah, right," Lee agreed. "Anyway."

"Anyway," George concurred.

"Sorry," Hermione said, raising her hand. "Let me rephrase that."

She cleared her throat. "What have you been getting people to try?"

"They're prank sweets," Fred said, holding one up. It looked a lot like a Muggle Black Jack to Harry, though not quite the same. "This one's got the complete taste of a three-course meal."

"The idea is, you give it to a friend like it's a normal sweet," George added, rummaging in his pockets and producing a lollipop. "But then they taste it, and it's completely different to what they expect – this one's actually pasta flavoured."

"What sort of pasta?" Ron asked.

"...pardon?" Lee blinked.

"Well, pasta is kind of a big category," Ron explained. "Is it salted? Buttered? Do you have any sauce?"

He spread his hands. "These are the big questions."

"They're the bistro questions, you mean," Dean snorted.

"Anyway!" Lee said, not for the first time. "Let's talk Quidditch, because it's actually happening this year."

"That's right," Fred agreed. "And with five of the eight Gryffindor team members in this compartment, this is technically a team meeting."

"Sorry, what?" Tanisis asked. "Eight team members?"

"They mean Lee Jordan," Luna told her friend. "The eighth team member is a member of the fourth estate who's a fifth columnist, even if they sometimes have a second opinion."

"That's a first," George noted. "And I hope you're not going to give away any of our plans?"

"Almost certainly," Luna told them. "But it'll be in the Quibbler, so most of my house mates won't take it at all seriously. They really are quite close-minded sometimes."

"Can't say fairer than that," Fred decided. "So, Ron, we're going to have to get you back up to speed on saving. And we need to check the rules, Ginny, to see if you can just ditch the broom and spend the match flying around as a falcon."

"It's rules legal to use an Animagus transformation," Hermione supplied. "I checked in Third Year after Ron started doing squirrel transformations. And it's never been disallowed for someone to jump off their broom, it's just _officially_ 'really, really stupid'."

"That's all you have to do to be officially really, really stupid?" George asked, interested. "Oh brother my brother, we should make ourselves some mustelid parachutes and finally get official recognition!"

* * *

Harry still more-or-less followed what the others were talking about with Quidditch tactics and who was whom in the other teams.

For obvious reasons, nobody had done any _official_ matches for a year, but despite Dean's best efforts to introduce Muggle sports to Hogwarts using the Quidditch training equipment there'd still been some impromptu games that kept people from just completely forgetting how to play.

It was Cedric's last year, and he was now the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain as well as being Head Boy and a Triwizard Champion, which made Ron ask if Cedric was single-handedly trying to get rid of all those stereotypes about Hufflepuffs.

Then something in the Redwall book caught Harry's attention, and he lost the thread of the conversation a bit. There was something in there about how maybe the team should take sealed envelopes up into the air so they could open them and _then_ find out what the plan was, but Harry wasn't sure, and then when he had to put down the book for a bit of a breather it was to find that the conversation had moved on completely.

"What I'm wondering is when Hogwarts is going to _have_ to make some changes," Hermione was saying. "It's going to have to happen _some_ time in the next decade, and the sooner people start thinking about that the easier it's going to be."

Ron frowned. "What kind of changes?"

"Yeah, everything seems fine now," Neville contributed.

"Well, think about it," Hermione said. "Nora's the mascot now, but she's more than three years old, and in another eight she's going to be getting her Hogwarts letter. And you can't fit a dragon in the Potions classroom, for a start."

Dean stared. "Wait, hold on. Nora's going to Hogwarts?"

"I don't see why not, it's not like she'd be the first dragon," Hermione pointed out. "And she's quite obviously intelligent – she's certainly more mature than _I_ was at three years old – and she was certainly born close enough to Hogwarts to be in the catchment area."

"That's a good point, but Defence class is going to be weird with a big dragon in it," Ron mused. "Actually, it must already be weird with a sphinx or a centaur in it."

"Or a Black Backed Bookwyrm," Luna contributed.

"Well, yeah, but Harry's just Harry," Ron said.

"Actually, what _is_ our Defence class going to be like this year?" Neville asked. "We've had good luck the last couple of years, but is that going to stick?"

"I do hope so, it's our OWL year," Hermione fretted. "That's the year it matters most, well, apart from the NEWT year and Fred, George and Lee have that."

Lee tapped out a rhythm on the floor. "I'm kind of wondering why the teacher got chosen so late. We barely had time to get our textbooks."

That reminded Harry that he hadn't actually gone through the Defence textbook himself, so he went to rummage around in his things and get it out for a read.

"Maybe they didn't get chosen late, they were just _really_ indecisive," Dean suggested, snorting.

Checking for a moment to make sure he had the right book – a book about _Defensive Magical Theory_, by Wilbert Slinkhard – Harry opened it and started reading.

The first thing that he noticed (and it was hard to ignore) was that the book was a little bit dry. It wasn't unreadable, not for a dragon who'd read the _Silmarillion_ and then started using it as reference notes for a dungeons and dragons campaign, but it was a lot less easy to read than other books they'd had.

The first chapter was kind of weird, as far as Harry was concerned, because it seemed to be taking a very long time indeed to explain in great detail some very basic concepts. There was a page and a half on what a shield spell was – not about how it worked, just what it was – and every time a spell was mentioned it was immediately followed by a long cautionary note about the possible collateral damage. (That included the shield spell, where it was carefully noted down that a spell cast with insufficient power to penetrate the shield but with more power than could be dissipated by the shield – a threshold gap that usually increased with how well cast 'most common' shield spells were – would be repulsed in a ricochet, and that these bounced spells could cause a significant amount of damage to bystanders or others in the vicinity.)

The book, or Slinkhard Harry supposed he should say, did say that there was a much superior shield spell that could be found in later chapters of the book which avoided these problems. Which sounded useful.

Another thing that Harry started to notice, as he worked through the book, was that some of the paragraphs or sentences had a number or letter label attached to them. So the bit about collateral damage from shield spells was labelled in neat brackets with the legend (1E), and then a page or so later Slinkhard referred back to 1E without further explanation as part of why all offensive or defensive spellcasting in a crowded area could be risky.

It was easy enough to understand the idea, at least in that case, but then Harry got curious and flipped through to about halfway through the book.

_It should therefore be evident, in keeping with case 14D and 14E, that using 11A for the analysis produces the most useful result in this situation. The crowded environment means that missed (4B) or deflected (1E, 9B) spells all cause as much damage as they would if they had been deliberately targeted…_

Harry decided that this wasn't one of those books where you could just go into any part of it and read it. You had to read it right from the start, and keep notes about things, or you'd be constantly flipping back and forth and wouldn't get anywhere.

He went back to the first chapter, and kept reading.

* * *

"So, what's it like?" Fred asked. "How's it looking for our new Defence teacher?"

Harry looked up, noticing that the sun was setting – they couldn't be all that far from Hogwarts – and thought about it for a moment before answering.

"It's kind of dense," he admitted. "A lot of it involves referring back to previous parts of the book, you know, like if there's a reference book but it has endnotes instead of footnotes."

"What, really?" Ron said, rummaging in his bags for his own book.

He opened it, glanced through, and groaned. "It does, as well."

"Oh, I know a solution for that," George said, drawing his wand. "Let's see one of them?"

Harry put down the book at the page he was on, tapping a couple of examples with his foretalon, and George examined the page before putting the tip of his wand on one that said 4C.

"_Flipendnote!"_ he announced.

"You what?" Ron asked, then everyone jumped back in surprise as the book neatly flipped back through the pages to paragraph 4C.

"Wait, that actually worked?" George asked.

"You didn't know?" Harry blinked.

"It was a pun," George explained, a bit weakly. "You know. Like the knockback jinx, Flipendo."

"Do you get extra credit in Charms for inventing spells?" Tanisis checked. "You should mention it in your NEWTs."

"Oh, that's a good point," Harry realized, thinking about _Xenographia._

You'd probably need to have a bilingual examiner, though.

"Wait, hold on a moment," Neville said. "How do we get back to the page we were reading?"

"There's this wonderful Muggle invention for that," Luna informed him, rummaging in her pocket, and brought out something that Harry found very familiar indeed.

"...Luna, that's a bookmark," Ginny felt herself bound to point out.

"Yes, they're very useful, aren't they?" Luna smiled.

* * *

About ten minutes later Harry had to stop anyway, because he had to help let people know that the train was arriving at Hogsmeade station before long and they should get changed.

That part of being a prefect was nice and easy, at least, and that started Harry thinking about how he could make sure all the first-years knew what was what.

Maybe he should fly over and keep a bit of an eye on the first-years in case any of them needed help during their trip over the lake? They wouldn't see him in the darkness, and he'd be able to see if there was a problem… though Harry also supposed that that would mean he'd be travelling separately from his friends.

It was a tricky problem, and Harry finally made up his mind to do the flying-over just in case only a moment before the Hogwarts Express shivered to a stop.

Hermione opened the door, and almost straight away saw two people trying to manhandle a big trunk out of a carriage. "You don't need to do that," she assured the first-year girls. "It'll be taken up to your room once you know what House you'll be in."

The girls both looked at Hermione with awe, then saw Harry and looked even more awestruck. Harry gave them a smile and a little wave, though this time he remembered to keep his muzzle closed to reduce the teeth quotient, and the general movement of students from compartments out onto the platform started to sort that problem out.

It was a bit chaotic, which was normal, and Harry made a point of telling Isaac not to fly to the castle because there was a tradition of going a different way in First Year. That was about when Hagrid started calling for the first years to follow him, which made things easier, and Harry caught sight of June giving her (cousin?) a pat on the side before sending him off towards Hagrid.

"I'll keep an eye on them until they're across the lake," Harry said, as the other six years moved towards the Thestral carriages, then spread his wings and took off in a rush of wind.

* * *

It was quite a warm evening, still, though there were plenty of clouds and it felt like it might rain before long. Harry powered into the sky, relying on main wing strength instead of anything with more finesse, then banked around to get a good look at Hogwarts and the Black Lake and the Forbidden Forest.

That let him catch sight of Conal, trotting briskly out of the Forest towards Hogwarts, and that gave Harry a smile – it was good that Conal had got his preference – before he slipped a bit lower, staying over the wooded area, so he could hear a little of what was going on where Hagrid was leading the first-years.

It sounded like they were mostly moving in silence, except for Hagrid telling them that there wasn't much further to go. Then they reached the little headland where the trees parted to give everyone their first view of Hogwarts, and the collective gasp reached Harry even flying overhead.

Then there was a sharp whistle from Hagrid, which didn't sound like anything that had happened the first time. The boats were already there waiting for them, but a moment later there was an answering roar that echoed across the water.

Big and black against the backdrop of the sky – and of Hogwarts – Nora burst out from behind Hogwarts before dropping towards the Lake. Three smaller shapes followed her, forming a slightly ragged diamond, and all four dragons skimmed low over the water towards the First Years before pulling up and shooting flame.

It was like an air display.

"Hi!" Nora said, wings thrumming as she pulled up and began to hover in front of Harry. "It's nice to see you again!"

She waved a paw at Ollie, Gary and Sally, who had all done flips before starting to circle. "We practiced that! Did it look good?"

"It was great from up here," Harry told her. "I bet the First-Years were really impressed."

"Woosh!" Gary announced proudly.

It seemed as though the introduction to Hogwarts was developing a few new features.

* * *

AN:

Prefect Prefect Prefect.

It's harder than it looks.


	69. Dragon Your Feast

Harry went to join the thestral carriages after that, making sure to let his friends (especially Dean) know that there had been a flypast performed by the dragons, and after that (and a long and slightly peculiar discussion about the school hats that nobody really bothered with) went in to find seats in the Great Hall.

The teachers were already in place at the High Table, and Ron was the first to look – then nudged Dean.

"Hey, mate, is that the Divination teacher?" he asked. "Next to Snape."

"Nah, she looks different," Dean replied. "Unless something really bizarre happened over the holiday."

Harry looked himself as he took his seat, and found to his surprise that he recognized the Defence teacher – it was Dolores Umbridge, the woman from his first-year who'd tried to argue that he didn't deserve a wand.

He didn't remember hearing about her since. Maybe she'd done one of those things where someone came to a realization about how silly they were being?

It didn't seem likely that she'd be coming to Hogwarts otherwise, though Harry decided it would be best to keep an open mind.

Mentally recategorizing her as Professor Umbridge, Harry turned to watch as the rest of the upper years filed into the room.

"You know Professor Lupin, right?" one of the third-years asked – Harry thought her name was Romilda. "Do you know why he's not here this year?"

"Problems with his family," Harry replied, trying to think of how to summarize it. "He got badly hurt which is why he wasn't here last year, but he's having to home school his whole new family and it's taking a while. He might be back next year, but we don't really know."

"Shame," Romilda sighed. "I know we can't get Professor Moody back, but I was hoping we'd get Professor Lupin."

"I'm just glad you don't want my brother Percy back," Ron admitted.

* * *

Someone asked about what Care of Magical Creatures was like, after that, and Harry did his best to try to explain it. Flopsy helped – she was the odd one out at the moment as her two sisters were having an earnest conversation with Natalie McDonald, and while the Barlos girls hadn't actually _done_ Care of Magical Creatures they _were_ a Magical Creature so there was that.

Then the doors opened, and the First Year students came in.

"Wow!" Dennis breathed. "That's a griffin!"

Hermione made the sort of noise that Harry thought sounded like she was trying her best to strangle a giggle, because a giggle wouldn't befit a new prefect.

It was quite an extraordinary noise.

"I do hope we'll get him in Gryffindor," Nearly Headless Nick said, somewhat to Harry's surprise as he hadn't noticed the ghosts arriving. Lord Ridley hadn't tried to slay him even once, so he'd sort of assumed they weren't here yet.

Plus there hadn't been an awkward meeting with the Grey Lady, so there was that as well.

"Makes sense, doesn't it?" Neville asked. "If we get a Puffskein or a snake at Hogwarts I know what houses I'd expect them to go into."

"Actually, don't all snakes speak Parseltongue?" Hermione said, sounding slightly tentative in case the giggle escaped. "So wouldn't they all count as magical?"

Harry didn't mention the _very_ large and _extremely_ magical snake down in the basement.

"What about a raven?" Ron asked. "Are there any talking ravens?"

"There… _might_ be," Hermione frowned, distracted. "I don't actually think I've read any magical books about them, but if they're obscure enough – they'd certainly be Beings, they're not in _Fantastic Beasts..."_

Then silence spread through the hall as Professor McGonagall set out the Sorting Hat, and it began to sing.

* * *

No matter Harry's opinion about how bad Hogwarts singing had been when he'd first arrived – it had improved a lot since the formation of the choir – he had to admit that the Sorting Hat had always known his stuff.

Even if this time he had, indeed, resorted to alliteration.

The first name to be called was Euan Abercrombie – or Abercrombie, Euan, as Professor McGonagall put it – and he went to Gryffindor, which got a rousing round of applause from all of Harry's table. That started the familiar routine of the Sorting, and Harry did his best to remember as many names as possible – though he had to admit he was waiting for when the more-complicatedly-shaped students would be called, partly because he only knew their first names and not their surnames.

Isaac kept ruffling his wings a little as he waited, feathers twitching out and then back again, and his tail flicked in a way that seemed to show how anxious he was. A few spaces along from him Matthew – the warg, June's possibly-cousin – was lifting his paws and putting them down again, as if he very much wanted to pace back and forth but was restraining himself.

Then there was Melody, who was a little harder to pick out. Harry _thought_ she was the pale looking one at the end of the line, though a lot of the girls looked pale and she might just be a Malfoy instead.

Did Draco have a younger sister? Harry didn't think so, but then again he hadn't known Daphne had a younger sister until she turned up. Some things just didn't get mentioned in conversations for some reason.

"Forrester, Matthew!" was the first unusually-shaped student to be called, and Harry noticed that Professor Umbridge looked momentarily upset.

Maybe she didn't know about the typewriters? Conal hadn't needed one, and everyone else who'd needed one had already got one, but Harry made a mental note to ask about making sure that Matthew and Isaac (at least) got the specially-set-up typewriters that would make doing work in class much easier for them.

It took about thirty seconds for the Hat to decide that Matthew was to go to Hufflepuff, joining June (though not _quite_ joining her, because he actually sat almost halfway down the table next to another first year) and then it turned out that there were only two people between him and Isaac.

Isaac had just the one name, no last name at all, and there was a sort of little intake of breath from the whole Gryffindor table as he sat down next to the stool with the Sorting Hat on his head.

It looked like it was quite a difficult sort, and Harry tilted his head a little to see if he could hear the Hat's mutterings.

"...difficult," he caught, barely within earshot. "...goodness… SLYTHERIN!"

Gryffindor table started clapping, stopped in bafflement, and then there was the distinctive sound of Blaise Zabini sniggering.

"...well," Nearly Headless Nick said, as Slytherin slightly belatedly started applauding and Isaac made his way over to his new House. "I wonder what prompted that?"

"Great," Ron groaned. "The griffin's in Slytherin. Now we're going to _need_ a snake to keep up… what do you think? Basilisk? I think basilisk sounds good."

"I… was going to say basilisks are dangerous, but I don't even think that's an argument any more," Hermione admitted. "Would they need mirrored sunglasses or something?"

* * *

The line steadily shrank as student after student was Sorted. Harry kept waiting for Melody's name to come up, but it wasn't until there were only three people left that "Von, Melody!" was asked to go up to be Sorted.

She walked over to the stool, seemingly not _quite_ sure how fast to move, then sat down and pulled the hat on. There was a wait of about thirty seconds, and then the Hat determined that Melody was to go to GRYFFINDOR!

Harry led the applause, this time, partly because he was paying a bit more attention than usual, and Melody took a place that happened to be next to Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.

"Von what?" Fred asked.

"Funny," Melody replied. "I've never heard _that_ before. It's V-a-u-g-h-n _Vaughn_, not Von."

Harry was going to feel especially sorry for her, but then he remembered all the _other_ people with names that related to who they were and what they did – like, well, Professor Sprout who taught Herbology.

So he just felt normally sorry for her.

* * *

Once the final student was sorted – Hufflepuff, in her case, where she sat next to Matthew – Dumbledore cleared his throat and stood.

"I would like to inform you all about a marvellous new product I saw last week," he said brightly. "Alas, the sponsorship deal has fallen through, so I can say no more about it. Please enjoy the feast!"

"He's branching out," Dean noted, as the golden platters magically filled with food.

"How well does being Headmaster, Supreme Mugwump and all that stuff pay?" Ron said. "Maybe he needs to take on a side job to make sure he has enough money to buy clothes."

"The Headmaster position does have a salary," Hermione informed them. "Unfortunately, the last reference to what it _is_ is from eleven seventy-three, and at that point it was about one galleon a year."

"Blimey," Ron blinked. "If he's never got a pay rise that would explain it."

"Does anyone see any black pudding?" Melody asked.

Harry lifted his head as high as it would go to look both ways along the table, then shook his head. "Doesn't look like it."

"Right," she said. "Oh well."

Rummaging in her robes, she brought out a bright red lollipop wrapped in cellophane and put it next to her plate. Then she looked up.

"What?" she asked. "It's food supplements."

"That's a blood pop, right?" Neville asked, then winced. "Uh… sorry, if that was a secret."

"Like it was going to stay secret for long," Melody said, rolling her eyes. "Yes. Vampire. Scary."

Harry tried not to pay _too_ much attention to her, because staring would be rude, but she was sort of the focus of attention at the moment and it would look silly to be obviously looking _away_ as well.

"Ugh, I think there's garlic in that sauce," she added. "Anyone sitting further away want to take it?"

A few whispered conversations ended with Lee Jordan taking the plate, and Melody visibly relaxed a bit.

"That stuff's awful," she said.

"So, um… you're a young vampire?" Ginny asked. "How does that work?"

"Dad was a vampire," Melody replied. "Look, can I just eat?"

Put like that, there wasn't much arguing with it.

* * *

Over the next hour or so, most of what got talked about was the usual sort of thing for the first day back at Hogwarts. This time for Harry and his classmates it was about what sort of things they did in OWLs, such as what people did for their Runes projects or whether Professor Snape actually graded them fairly.

Neville wanted to know if they had to actually grow things for Herbology, and was mildly disappointed when Fred told him that they just had to do replanting and stuff like that. (Then Dean pointed out that this _was_ Fred, so he could have been making it up for a laugh.)

Harry did have a new experience, which was that people were asking him for advice on Prefect-y things. Euan (one of the new First-Years) wanted to know when they got their class schedules and when class started, and Harry was able to let him know that normally it was at the first breakfast of the term. Since today was a Friday, though, and tomorrow was a Saturday, that meant that they had at most perhaps one class on Saturday before the weekend – so Euan would be able to get nice and settled in.

Then Matthew came over from Hufflepuff to ask about the typewriters he'd been told about, and Harry assured him that he'd make sure Professor Dumbledore knew that both he and (probably) Isaac would need one. He thought Professor Flitwick might have been involved with some of the Charms work, offhand, but he'd need to check to make sure and at that point he may as well simply approach Dumbledore about it.

Melody did have a couple of questions for him herself, about whether it was possible to make sure that there was less garlic in the food, and Harry thought about that for a bit before saying he'd see if the House-Elves could do anything. He thought maybe they'd be able to ensure that one end of the table didn't have anything with garlic in, which sounded like it was going to work.

The second question was how many of the classes were outside. It seemed that – while the idea Muggles had that vampires would catch fire in sunlight wasn't correct – they did sunburn extremely easily, and Harry was able to tell her that the most risky classes were going to be Herbology, Flying and summer Astronomy in First-Year, while in Third-Year it would probably be a bad idea to take Care of Magical Creatures.

That seemed to answer all of her questions for now.

* * *

Despite all the conversations that were going on, Harry did find time to eat. He was mildly intrigued by what originally looked like pasta but turned out to be made of courgette and carrot (something which Ron viewed with great suspicion, despite the orange colour of the carrots) and found a lot to like in salmon en papillote, though Hermione did have to tell him that the paper wasn't normally supposed to be eaten.

It went well with it, though.

The desserts included a four foot high lion made out of biscuits, which was quite unexpected, though on looking around Harry saw that the other three houses had also got giant versions of their own mascots in the form of biscuits.

He liked the ones that the mane was made of, though when Ken Towler came and tried to take some of the leg he overbalanced it and the whole thing collapsed. (Only some quick wand-work by Hermione prevented a complete disaster, and several of the First-Years applauded, though Hermione did have to Banish it to plates all down the table instead of being able to reconstruct the lion in one piece.)

Finally, though, the last of the food faded away, and Dumbledore rose to speak.

* * *

"Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome," Dumbledore said. "I do apologize for only saying welcome five times, but if I did it once for every single student then I fear we would never get to bed. It is nice to see you all once more, and I hope you are as full of food as you are empty of knowledge after the long summer holiday."

He smiled pleasantly. "If this is your first year, then instead I will say that it is nice to see you for the first time! I hope you enjoy your time here at Hogwarts, even with all the homework that will be happening. Now, I have a few announcements to make for both new and returning students."

"Is he always like this?" Melody asked quietly.

"Brilliant, isn't it?" Cottontail replied, and then Dumbledore was continuing – reading off a scroll that he'd apparently had up his sleeve.

"Firstly, the name for the forest near the castle is the Forbidden Forest. As a consequence of the name, it is forbidden to enter it – which should be nice and easy to remember – though there is an exception for students who happen to live there anyway, of which this year I believe there are three. For those students, however, the name will remain for ease of reference."

He rolled the scroll slightly to read a different section. "Mr. Filch, the caretaker, has asked me to read out a full list of the things that are forbidden in the school. If you will bear with me a moment..."

Everyone watched in silence, except for some scattered giggles, as Dumbledore kept going down the scroll – down, and down, and down, until he reached the bottom and turned over to the other side.

"I do believe that if I were to read all of these out it would take even longer than the welcomes," he judged. "Nevertheless, I would invite anyone who is unsure what items are forbidden to go and check the list posted on Mr. Filch's door, and I will specifically mention Mr. Fred and George Weasley, Mr. and Miss Smith, and Mr. Jordan as people who will be assumed to know this list off by heart."

"I think we actually do, unless he's changed it," Harry heard George mutter.

"Probably has," Fred replied.

The scroll had vanished again, and Dumbledore smiled. "I also wish to inform everyone that we now have no fewer than five dragons at Hogwarts, and none of them are especially dangerous unless you do something so foolish as tickle them while they are sleeping. The ones wearing scarves are the more conventional sort of dragon, albeit very well behaved and able to communicate in the fine language of Dragonish, while Mr. Potter of Gryffindor is wearing a prefect's badge and will doubtless be able to help you with any trouble you are having which requires a prefect."

Lots of heads turned to look at him, and Harry waved.

It seemed like the right thing to do.

"As anyone who is a returning student may have noticed, we have a new staff member this year," Dumbledore told them all. "As our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, who was truly in a class of her own in regards to applicants to the position, may I introduce you all to Professor Umbridge."

There was a scattered round of applause. Before it had finished, Professor Umbridge stood up (it was a little hard to tell) and cleared her throat in a sort of odd 'hem hem' kind of way.

Harry didn't quite remember the details, but he thought that one of the Discworld books had mentioned that 'hem hem' was how you mentioned something about people being nude without actually saying it out loud.

Perhaps it was something to do with the seamstresses? They were about what the books called negotiable affection.

"Ah, Dolores, you would like a word?" Dumbledore asked. "Or several? I find most people quite baffled when I only say one."

"Thank you, Headmaster," Professor Umbridge simpered, and Dumbledore sat down before gazing at her with rapt attention.

None of the other teachers seemed quite so impressed.

"I am delighted to have such a lovely welcome here," Professor Umbridge went on, smiling brightly. "It's so wonderful to be back at Hogwarts and to see such happy little faces looking up at me!"

Harry sort of wondered if Professor Umbridge had ended up going to the wrong school. He didn't even think there _was_ a wizarding primary school, but if there was it sounded exactly like she was pitching her welcome at them.

"I'm going to be teaching you in _Defence Against the Dark Arts,"_ the Professor added, stressing each syllable precisely. "I know it's been ever so hard to follow with how many changing teachers you've had, especially when some of them really haven't known what they were talking about or what was appropriate for lessons, but I've come in to fix all that and I'm sure we'll all be _such_ good friends!"

Harry could definitely hear chuckles coming from Gryffindor table, but people chuckled at what Professor Dumbledore said as well and it didn't seem right to tell them to stop. So that didn't really feel like a time to do a Prefect thing and tell people off a bit.

"I look forward to meeting each and every one of you," Professor Umbridge concluded. "And teaching you all you'll _ever_ need to know about Defence Against the Dark Arts."

She sat down, and Dumbledore stood up again.

"Thank you for that, Dolores," he said, pleasantly. "I must say I had never before considered the idea of our new staff members introducing themselves to the school. I wonder if I should ask someone else to, such as Professor Snape?"

The glare that Professor Snape shot Dumbledore was really quite amazing to behold. It almost made Harry sure that Snape couldn't cast Wandless Magic, because by the looks of things if he _could_ then Dumbledore would have been a smoking pair of slippers.

"Or perhaps I shall do it myself," Dumbledore added. "Good evening to you all. My name is Albus Percival Brian Wulfric Dumbledore, though I _may_ have arranged those fiddly middle bits incorrectly. I am the Headmaster of this school, also the Supreme Mugwump, the Chief Warlock, and something called a Grand Sorceror which I have not yet been able to discern. If anyone can help me find this lost title then please do alert me."

A wave of giggles swept through the room.

"I hope as many of us as possible will be quite good friends," the Headmaster went on. "I find that it is much more pleasant to have friends than to not have them, after all. And as my last word I will simply say: bedtime!"

He sat down with aplomb, and it took a moment for Harry to realize that that meant the feast was over.

* * *

"Hey, mate, what's the password for the dorm?" Dean asked, as people started to slowly get up. "I forgot to ask earlier."

"Swordfish," Harry told him.

"Thanks," Dean replied, and turned into Upstart before flying over the heads of most of the other students to head for the main staircase.

"Wow!" half the Gryffindor First-Years gasped, almost in unison.

"Did he just turn into a bird?" someone said.

"He's an Animagus," Ginny explained. "So yes."

Harry counted, doing his best to remember how many new Gryffindors there were. It looked like there were the same number of First-Years present as there were people who'd been sorted, so he flared a wing slightly for attention.

"Hogwarts is a bit confusing," he told them all. "Gryffindor's dorms are up on the seventh floor, so I'm afraid we've got a lot of climbing to do."

Euan groaned.

"If you follow me, though, there's a route where you can skip one of the floors," Harry went on. "It's this way."

He hadn't actually discussed with Hermione about who should lead the first-years up to the dorm, but it seemed to make sense that it should be him because he was the one who was the most distinct. Nobody really complained, either, and so Harry took them first up three flights of the main staircase before branching off and through one of the secret passages.

"This one feels like it's going up one floor, but it's going up two," he explained, looking back over his shoulder so everyone could hear.

"Isn't there a lift?" someone asked.

"There's broomsticks, but they're not allowed indoors," Hermione answered, from the back of the group.

Harry led them out again, through a tapestry which showed twenty people at a feast, and pointed out how the tapestry looking like a feast was a useful way to remember it was part of the quick route to the Great Hall. Then they were going up again, and it was only two more flights of stairs before they reached the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.

"Ah, the first years, I see!" the Fat Lady said pleasantly. "Welcome, all of you, to Hogwarts, and to Gryffindor as well!"

She turned her attention to Harry. "Password?"

"Swordfish," Harry told her, and she swung neatly open.

"The password changes several times a term," Harry explained. "If you're not sure what it is, ask a prefect."

There was a bit of a problem with that, and he corrected himself a moment later. "Preferably one from Gryffindor."

That got a few giggles, and then the new students went through one by one.

* * *

Harry took a moment more to let them know that – to help make sure they didn't get lost – he was going to be heading down to breakfast, lunch and dinner right at nine, twelve and six for the next two days, so anyone who wasn't sure of the right route could follow him.

"There's also some school maps that are made by Mr. Lupin, my Lycanthruncle," Harry told them. "They're not free, but they're a couple of sickles, and if anyone wants them let me know and I can get him to send enough for everyone who wants one."

"Any questions?" Hermione asked.

"Where are our bedrooms?" asked one of the first-year girls – Harry was _fairly_ sure her name was Alice.

"Girls' dorm rooms are through that door," Hermione told them. "You only have to go up three flights of stairs to get to the dorm."

"_More_ stairs?" someone else groaned.

"Hey, _we're_ on the fourteenth floor," Seamus chuckled, having come through the portrait hole in time to hear that. "And unlike _some_ people, I can't just fly up there."

"What does Lycanthruncle mean?" a boy called Herbert asked.

"It's kind of like the brother of my dogfather," Harry replied. "Except I think the brother of my dogfather was actually my dad, and none of them were related."

After he'd finished saying it, he thought for a moment about how that explanation had somehow managed to make _him_ more confused.

"...what?" someone said.

"It's one of his godfather's friends," Hermione explained. "His godfather tells terrible puns."

There didn't seem to be any more questions, and after a few more minutes people started to go filtering up the stairs.

Harry went up once the first rush had slowed down, snagging a few things from his trunk – his copy of _Dragonsinger_, a photograph of Nora, and a blacked-out mirror – then went back to go down the stairs again.

"Not turning in yet, mate?" Ron asked.

"I thought I'd stay downstairs and read for a bit," Harry explained. "Not quite ready to go to sleep."

"Teenage dragons get all the luck," Neville said, yawning. "You get up earlier than us _and_ go to bed later."

"Plus, you know, he can _fly_ and stuff," Ron sniggered.

* * *

About half an hour later, with the common room empty, Harry activated the mirror.

"Empress?" he asked.

"Welcome back to Hogwarts," the ancient basilisk replied. "I do have the date right?"

"That's right," Harry agreed. "Well done on teaching the dragonets, the difference was obvious when I met them earlier."

Empress' hiss sounded pleased.

"My friends were joking about getting a basilisk for Gryffindor," Harry added. "I didn't tell them about you, the idea came up because a griffin student joined this year and he's gone into Slytherin."

It was at that moment that Harry learned what it sounded like for a snake to snort with amusement.

"Oh!" she said. "I wonder what Salazar would have thought..."

She paused for a long moment, then spoke up again. "It is late. Do you have time for some reading?"

"A bit," Harry told her, opening _Dragonsinger_. "So, last time, Menolly had forgotten her pipes..."

* * *

AN:

Yep, it's her.

Bit different reasons why, though.

As for Isaac... well.


	70. A Textbook Problem

There were a lot of funny things about Fifth Year, as far as Harry was concerned.

The first one was the Prefect thing, which seemed like an awful lot of bother but which wasn't going _too_ badly – it was just odd to have to think about it all the time. People came to him with questions, and he answered the best way he could, but he also had to keep an eye (or a nose) out for when people seemed worried in a way that maybe didn't quite mean they felt they needed to talk to someone just yet.

And then there were the times when someone was breaking the rules, though fortunately so far the only thing Harry had had to do was to gently remind someone not to run in the corridors.

But the other odd thing about it was that the change from summer-holiday to fully-school was quite… slow, because the Sorting Feast had been on a Friday. In turn that meant that it was the weekend for the first two proper days of term, and they didn't have any _homework_ for the first two days of term.

Harry did get a chance to show the first-years around the castle, though. Which helped.

* * *

Eventually, the school year proper started, and it started with History of Magic. That meant Giant Wars, this year, and that in turn meant a slightly sad introduction to the subject with the situations that led up to the war.

Professor Binns had always been a bit dry – most of Harry's friends counted themselves lucky to remain awake through a lesson – but as he took notes Harry began to realize that there was a real tragic side to the Giant Wars, perhaps more so than most of the other wars they heard about.

Looking at the reasons given by the history books, it seemed as though the real cause of the conflict had been the Statute of Secrecy. Giants were Beings, not Beasts, which meant that they were supposed to take care of keeping themselves secret (and probably that because they were human-shaped there was less prejudice attached to them) but at the same time it meant that if they _didn't_ take care of keeping themselves secret then they could all get in trouble for it.

It seemed clear enough that there had been some real problems with keeping British Giants secret as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries went on, but names that Harry vaguely remembered from doing the Industrial Revolution in history class (like the valleys in South Wales) suggested to him that maybe the problem had been more Muggles around in the places it happened that the giants lived.

Even with the way the history book had been written – mostly from the Wizard perspective, as Muggles hadn't known anything about it and Giants presumably would have needed bigger books – Harry could see why the Giants wouldn't have been very happy about having to change how they'd lived for centuries. And the wars had more or less just… happened because nobody could sort out a way for them not to.

Despite that, Harry had to wonder if the word 'war' was correct. He thought you needed more people involved than there had been in the Giant Wars described.

It was sort of sad, and Harry wondered what Hagrid thought about it. Even though it had been ages before he was born, maybe he thought something about it?

Asking would be impolite, though, so Harry thought it was likely he'd never know. Unless Hagrid just said it one day – which, admittedly, was the sort of thing Hagrid would do.

On reflection, it was one of the reasons Harry liked him.

* * *

Potions was next, and unlike Professor Binns Professor Snape didn't go straight into the lesson.

"Doubtless for some of you this is not your first lesson of the year," he began, instead. "Whatever your other teacher this morning may have said, though, I want to make one thing very clear."

His gaze swept the desk, focusing on each student in turn.

"At the end of this year, you will be sitting your Ordinary Wizarding Levels," he said, presumably just in case nobody had heard about them yet. "During this examination, you will be expected to prove how much you have learned about the composition and use of magical potions. In particular, _I_ expect you all to scrape an Acceptable in your OWL… or I will be very displeased."

Harry certainly hoped he could do that. His marks in Potions were usually Exceeds Expectations, which was a bit odd if you thought about it because it meant that he expected to exceed expectations.

"Naturally, while this will be sufficient to grudgingly earn you an OWL, it will not be enough to continue studying Potions with me," Professor Snape continued. "I take only the very best students into my NEWT Potions class; it comes as something of a relief to only have to teach those capable of following basic instructions, which is something of a rarity among my classes. Any among you who do not achieve an O on your OWL will have to console yourselves with other pursuits."

That seemed to make sense to Harry. It was a bit odd at first that Professor Snape would only take the very best students, but then again Potions was a tricky subject and it was sort of like needing someone to get an A to take an A level.

Which _might_ have been where the name of A level came from? Harry wasn't sure, on account of not actually having been to a secondary school that wasn't Hogwarts.

"Mr. Potter," Professor Snape said, abruptly. "If I had a potion involving nettles, daisy roots, shrivelfig, rat spleen, wormwood, sliced caterpillars, cowbane and leech juice, and I was about to add doxy eggs, why might I think again?"

Harry thought about it for about ten seconds, then realized why those ingredients sounded familiar.

"Is it because most of those ingredients are found in the Shrinking Solution, sir?" Harry asked. "And because doxy eggs are living things, they might be shrunk and not react correctly?"

"That's certainly _one_ reason," Professor Snape drawled. "Mr. Malfoy?"

"Doxies eat caterpillars, so if you add the eggs it would neutralize the caterpillars," Draco answered. "And since the caterpillars are a stabilizing element, the potion would become unstable."

"Another good reason," the teacher agreed. "Miss Granger, I can see your hand is up and I have no doubt you know _all_ the answers, I am attempting to ensure that people think rather than wait for you to rescue them… Mr. Longbottom?"

"What potion are you trying to make, sir?" Neville asked.

"That, Mr. Longbottom, is a perfectly good question," Professor Snape said. "Let us say for the sake of this discussion that I am attempting to make a _growth_ potion, by inverting the elements of the Shrinking Solution..."

* * *

"I'm kind of looking forward to Sixth Year, now," Ron said, cutting up a sausage into little circles.

"You are?" Hermione asked, blinking. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?"

"Ha ha," Ron deadpanned. "You only have to do the subjects you want to in sixth year, and that means being able to not do Potions."

"Professor Snape isn't _that_ bad," Harry shrugged.

"He's bad enough," Ron countered.

He put the sausage between two slices of buttered bread, then set it on fire with bluebell flames. "Besides, I'm not sure I can get the marks to _do_ Potions anyway. I bet Hermione's going to do everything again though."

"Even Hermione might find that a bit much," Dean said. "_Percy_ found that a bit much."

"I have to admit I like the idea of being able to spend more time on Herbology," Neville told them a bit wistfully. "There are these Muggle things called Bonsai trees, I want to see if you can do that to Magical plants."

"A bonsai whomping willow would be fun," Dean chuckled. "You could play ping-pong with it."

"Excuse me?" Dennis Creevey asked, getting their attention. "Harry, um, Mr. Potter?"

Harry looked over. "Yes, Dennis?"

"We had Defence this morning," Dennis began. "And the teacher said that we wouldn't be casting any spells this year. Is that right?"

"I haven't had Defence myself, yet," Harry admitted. "But I've got it next, so I'll keep an eye on it."

"It just seems weird," Dennis said.

"You should ask Colin about _his_ first year's Defence," Ron advised, extinguishing his sandwich and taking a bite.

That made him frown, and he promptly ignited it again.

"Not hot enough," he clarified.

* * *

Harry made sure to arrive at Defence in good time. It wasn't hard, by this point – he had a good sense of the layout of the castle, even before using one of the Maps – and Harry was slightly surprised to discover that Gryffindor was with Ravenclaw this year rather than Slytherin.

Professor Umbridge was already there, sitting at the teacher's desk, and once everyone had arrived she clapped her hands and smiled brightly.

"Good afternoon, class!" she said.

"Good afternoon," Harry replied, though he was one of the only ones. Most of the rest of the class just made a noise which was more or less normal for teenagers on the first Monday afternoon of the new school year, which was something like 'mnuuuurgh'.

"Now, now," Professor Umbridge chided. "Not like that. Let's try this again, shall we?"

She was still smiling. "I will say, 'Good afternoon, class', and I would like you to please reply, 'Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge.' Ready?"

"Does she think we're _five?_" Dean whispered incredulously.

"Good afternoon, class," Professor Umbridge said again, and this time everyone did (more or less) say 'Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge' in reply.

"There we go!" the Professor beamed. "You see? It's not so hard! Now, wands away, and quills out. We will be starting with some basic notes and concepts."

Harry got out some parchment and his quill, wondering where this was going, and then he noticed that Neville's hand was up.

"Mr. Longbottom, questions will come once I have finished with the basic notes and concepts," Professor Umbridge told them, then stood up and tapped the board with her wand to make words appear.

Those showed the names of their various teachers from First-Year onwards.

"Seven teachers in four years," Professor Umbridge summarized. "And I don't know that I'd call _any_ of them any good."

Hermione's hand went up as well, and Professor Umbridge ignored them both. "It's _quite_ clear to me that none of your previous teachers in this subject bothered to either teach the basics or build on them in a logical way. Quite apart from how one of your teachers was an actual dark creature," at that more hands went up, plus Harry's paw, so that most of the class was waiting to speak, "I don't see anything about the proper legal context for defensive magic, or _any_ of the spells which have been proven to be safe for use in a crowd."

Another tap of her wand, and some bullet points about Course Aims appeared.

"Copy these down, please," the Professor requested, and Harry switched which paw he was holding up so he could write with his right while holding up his left.

The idea of the basics sounded at least _sort_ of sensible, but Harry was quite sure that Tonks (or Professor Nym, as she probably was on the school records for 1993) or whoever it was who'd taken over Professor Quirrell's slot in 1992 had covered the basics. And then Professor Moody and Professor Lupin had touched on the same basic ideas, while Percy's brief tenure _had_ to have covered whatever it was that they'd missed.

There was a bullet point about basic principles, one about situations for legal use, one about a context for practical use, and then a fourth one about the law being the same for everyone which was a bit strange.

When everyone had finished, Professor Umbridge considered before finally pointing at Neville. "Mr. Longbottom?"

"Professor, I was wondering whether we were going to do any practical magic in class," Neville said. "Are we?"

"Mr. Longbottom, any practical work must be built upon a firm theoretical basis," Professor Umbridge replied. "Doesn't that make sense? It's like learning to walk before you get on a broom."

She smiled brightly. "Since you have five years of theoretical basis to make up in one year, I don't think it's likely that you'll be reaching the point of casting spells in class."

She ignored the rest of the raised hands. "Has everybody got a copy of Wilbert Slinkhard's Defensive Magical Theory?"

There were a few mutters of agreement, and Professor Umbridge tutted.

"Since you seem to have such _dreadful_ manners, let's try this another way," she decided. "Anyone who does _not_ have a copy of Wilbert Slinkhard's Defensive Magical Theory, please raise your hand and I will be giving you detention for not bringing in the correct textbook."

All the hands went down, Harry's paw among them, though this time there was a rumble of dissent.

"Good!" the Professor said. "I should like you to turn to page five – there are twelve pages of preamble, so turn to page _five_, not page v – and read Chapter One, entitled Basics For Beginners. We will not be discussing it."

Harry had already read Chapter One, so he took out his textbook and instead turned through to where his bookmark was. It was about two thirds of the way into the book, and there'd only been two spells so far – both of them terribly complex with at least seven wand movements and fourteen syllables, and that was _after_ four pages of Arithmancy in each case which proved that the spells had been compressed down to the minimum required to reliably cast them.

He thought he was following what Mr. Slinkhard was trying to say, though. If he had it right, Slinkhard was trying to prove – mathematically – that using defensive spells should only be done in certain specific circumstances, and furthermore that most spells were too dangerous to justify using them in a fight. The only spells that should be cast were the ones in the book itself, which were admittedly very clever – so far there'd been a stunning spell which sort of worked out how hard you had to stun someone and then stunned them that hard and no more, so it was safe to use on children or more than one on the same person, and then there was a shield spell which didn't make the spells that hit it bounce off if they didn't get through. They'd always just ground out.

At the same time, there were things about the book which didn't make much sense, and Harry was flipping back to check what assumption 6C was when he noticed that Hermione already had her hand up.

* * *

For several minutes, not much seemed to happen. Harry had stopped reading – he'd already read chapter one, after all – and Hermione had her hand up, but everyone else was still going through the book and either making notes on pieces of scrap parchment or just slumped with one hand under their chin to support it.

Mostly the former category was the Ravenclaws and the latter category was the Gryffindors.

Harry did notice that Professor Umbridge's gaze kept flicking briefly to Hermione, then looking back down at her desk, so she definitely knew that Hermione wanted to say something – she just wasn't reacting.

Then Ron saw what Hermione was doing, and closed his book with an audible _thump_. That caught everyone's attention, and within a minute or so the whole class was looking either at Hermione or at Professor Umbridge instead of at what they were supposed to be reading.

Five minutes or so after that, Harry started to wish that he'd clicked a stopwatch. It didn't seem like this _could_ continue for the whole lesson… did it?

Someone coughed, and Professor Umbridge looked up properly this time.

"You are supposed to be reading the textbook, dear," she said.

"I already have, Professor Umbridge," Hermione replied, still with her hand in the air.

Professor Umbridge chuckled, a sort of breathy fake noise. "Then move on to the next chapter, of course."

"I've read the whole book, Professor."

_That_ seemed to leave Professor Umbridge surprised. Harry couldn't really blame her – there'd only been about four days for Hermione to do that, since the book list had come out so late.

"You have?" she asked. "What do you think of Slinkhard's fourth theorem?"

"The fourth theorem is a demonstration that, in an environment where there are more than two bystanders, the risk of collateral damage is increased if there are two people casting spells rather than just one person," Hermione said promptly. "The theorem is mathematically sound given the assumptions it makes, but the assumptions are not valid under most circumstances."

Professor Umbridge sniffed. "I hardly think that you know more about the appropriate situations for defensive spells than Mr. Slinkhard, Miss…?"

"Hermione Granger, Professor Umbridge," Hermione supplied. "And the problem with the fourth theorem is that nowhere in the entire book does Slinkhard consider the possibility of a hostile wizard who is willing to attack bystanders."

"And do you expect that situation to arise, Miss Granger?" Professor Umbridge inquired, sounding suddenly very interested. "Are you perhaps worried about any of your classmates?"

"No, Professor," Hermione answered. "But-"

"Not even the _dragon_ sitting next to you?" Professor Umbridge went on. "Or the _sphinx_ currently in fourth year in-"

"That's got nothing to do with it!" Terry erupted.

"What is your name?" Professor Umbridge asked, turning her attention to him.

"Terry Boot, Professor," the Ravenclaw boy replied.

"Do not speak out of turn, Mr. Boot," Professor Umbridge informed him. "I expect anyone who asks a question in my class to wait to speak until spoken to, and say their name clearly the first time they speak."

She turned back to Hermione. "Miss Granger? Are you perhaps worried about the _werewolf_ who was teaching two years ago? Or the dangerous lunatic who taught for much of your previous year?"

Every time she said a word like 'dragon', or 'werewolf', or 'sphinx', Professor Umbridge's voice sounded really quite disgusted. It was sort of amazing, because it didn't seem like she was going out of her way to do it and her voice always had a kind of forced sweetness as if she were speaking to someone in primary school – those words just seemed to carry all sorts of contempt.

"Actually, my _main_ concern is that the OWL exam in Defence Against the Dark Arts always involves a practical component," Hermione said. "And none of Slinkhard's spells have ever been on the exam."

"Well, I'm sure a bright girl like you will have no problems casting those spells in the exam," Professor Umbridge replied. "If you have finished the textbook, then I will require you to write out in your own words why Slinkhard's view is correct."

This time Harry put _his_ paw up, and nobody went back to their reading, and after several more minutes Professor Umbridge gave him a severe look.

"I did say that everyone should read their textbooks, Mr. Potter."

"Harry Potter, Professor Umbridge," Harry introduced himself. "I haven't finished the textbook but I'm about thirty chapters in. Someone told me at lunch that you said the second years wouldn't be doing any practical spellcasting either. Are you going to be teaching practical spells in any of your classes?"

Professor Umbridge smiled, but it wasn't a proper smile – not one with any warmth to it. "I hardly think that discussing other classes is appropriate in class time, Mr. Potter."

"Not like we're doing anything else with it," Seamus grumbled.

"I wondered if you wanted help with the spellcasting exercises," Harry explained. "Hermione and I are both ahead in the book, and if the textbook got assigned as homework then half of the class could be about discussing it and the other half could be doing practical lessons. Since Hermione and I are ahead we could use the homework time to practice spells for demonstration in class."

He shrugged his wings. "Though I did wonder if our OWLs have been changed so we don't have to do the practical work this year, but you didn't say anything about it to Hermione so I suppose not. If the book is meant to be one of a set of contrasting view points on Defence, on the other paw, then we're going to need to get through the book faster so we can get to the second viewpoint before the end of the year."

Professor Umbridge didn't say anything for about twenty seconds after Harry finished, and the rest of the class waited with bated breath.

"What a funny idea!" she said eventually, and tittered. "Mr. Potter, get back to reading your textbook, and I want no further interruptions for this class or any other."

* * *

"_I'm sorry, what?"_ Sirius asked, that evening.

Harry shrugged his wings, wondered if Sirius and Remus could see that on their end of the mirror, then went on. "She said that-"

"_No, I'm still held up on the bit about Professor Umbridge,"_ Sirius interrupted. _"Isn't she the one who tried to get your wand taken away?"_

He sighed, which _didn't_ make the sound go funny like it would have done for a microphone. _"Can you believe this, Remus? Why did Dumbledore hire _her?_"_

"_I don't think he had much choice,"_ Remus replied, still sitting down – unlike Sirius, who had lunged forwards at Harry's announcement. _"Remember what Nymphadora said about her fifth year teacher? They've been going downhill for a long time now."_

"_Tom Riddle has a lot to answer for,"_ Sirius groaned.

"You were good," Harry said. "Moody was good. Most of the replacement teachers were good."

"_Moody explicitly said he was doing less than one year,"_ Remus countered. _"The replacement teachers were replacements, and even then I've heard that none of them want to do it _twice_ in case that makes them into the regular teacher and the jinx gets them. And I – well, I got attacked by Fenrir Greyback."_

He smiled. _"So, what does Professor Umbridge actually teach? Is it all about dark creatures?"_

"Not so far," Harry replied. "It's all been out of a textbook by someone called Wilbert Slinkhard."

"_Slinkhard..."_ Remus repeated, frowning. _"It rings a faint bell, but I'm not sure where from. Maybe someone else recognizes it."_

He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. _"Well, Harry, I think the best thing for you to do is to read a different book as well. There's a series called Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts, it might be in the library."_

Harry wrote the title down, then checked who the author was and wrote that down as well.

"Thanks, Remus," he smiled.

"_Enough about that,"_ Sirius decided. _"How's it been being responsible, Harry? Have you started being boring yet?"_

"I don't _think_ so," Harry replied, then checked the time – it was about half an hour before curfew. "But I do have my patrol tonight, that might be when it happens."

"_I still think this counts as misusing the Map,"_ Sirius grumbled.

"_Padfoot, what do you think _I_ did with it?"_ Remus said. _"It's how I caught Adrian sneaking out in sixth year."_

"_...blimey,"_ Sirius said, sitting back into his chair. _"You think you know a wolf."_

* * *

Harry's first patrol that night was sort of interesting, because what it meant was going around at night and looking for a name walking around on the Marauders' Map which _wasn't_ the name of one of the other Prefects.

There were a few, mostly lost first-years who needed to be directed to the right common room, plus Anne Smith – in fox-form – who needed to be reminded that curfew applied to everyone. (She pointed out that that meant curfew applied to Harry as well, and he assured her that he would be giving himself a stern talking-to as soon as his rounds were done.)

Rather to Harry's surprise, one of the first-years in Hufflepuff was one Mary McCormack, who Harry had met years before on the island of Skye when she'd recognized him as a dragon. She seemed very embarrassed about the whole thing, and Harry decided that it would be easier on her to have Hannah Abbott handle getting her back to the right common room.

Harry also encountered four pets, eleven ghosts (including the Bloody Baron, who surprised him by beckoning him into a painting-free corner and thanking him) and one quite young and lost owl whoo Harry directed to the Owlery.

It was almost relaxing.

* * *

Tuesday saw Charms in the morning, then Runes.

Charms was more or less the sort of thing Harry had expected, but in Runes they were told that they had to officially write out their project proposal.

Harry already knew he was going to be making a sword for Neville, so that didn't take as long as they had in the lesson, but Ron was having a bit more trouble so he went over to help his friend.

"I'm suddenly not sure this is going to work," Ron admitted, looking at his diagram.

"What's the problem?" Harry asked. "Is it making the tank recreate the fuel?"

"No, that's fine," Ron replied. "It's _magical_ materials that you can't duplicate without Helga Hufflepuff's Cup or the Hopping Pot or whatever. I just had this sudden realization."

He pointed at the parchment, then out the window. "If I launch this, then the Muggles are going to notice, right? It's not a very big rocket, but I want it to go to space, and their, um, _Radar_ is going to see it because it's got metal in it. And the flames and steam trail are going to be easy to see too."

That _was_ a problem, and Harry frowned as he thought about it.

"Could you make it invisible somehow?" he asked. "Remus mentioned a spell called disillusionment, which makes something _hard_ to see."

"Not sure that works on Radar," Ron sighed gloomily. "Dad's got an invisibility booster on our car, which does make it vanish from Radar we think, but it only lasts about twenty minutes at a time and then it runs out of windscreen washer fluid."

Harry was confused for a moment, then decided maybe it was something to do with being 'see through'.

Then he snapped his claws together with a _click_. "What about if you ask Beauxbatons? That giant flying carriage of theirs must have got away with flying over a lot of Britain and France, so they must have a way to not appear on Radar."

"Oh, that's a great idea!" Ron said, brightening.

"You might want to make sure you charm the rocket to be Unbreakable, though," Harry added, thinking about some of the science fiction books he'd read. "You don't want to bump into any space debris and explode."

"Exploding would be bad," his friend said. "I don't like the sound of exploding. If I did I'd play Quodpot."

* * *

Luna brought Tiobald over at lunch, and the selkie boy told Harry – through sign language mediated by his friend – that the third-year Ravenclaws had had Defence that morning, and Professor Umbridge had taken thirty points off Tiobald for not answering when she'd called on him to answer questions.

She'd also apparently told him to 'stop that stupid hand waving'. Which Harry assumed (and checked) actually meant sign language.

Harry didn't like Professor Umbridge.

* * *

Just after lunch it was Care of Magical Creatures. Professor Kettleburn was still soldiering on, cheerful as ever, but to Harry's surprise today Hagrid was helping – and, it turned out, the lesson was their first look at a unicorn.

It was a beautiful creature, with a flawless silver coat and golden hooves, and Professor Kettleburn told them that the oldest unicorns were pure white instead of silver while the foals were golden. They were flawless and pure in another way as well, Harry could somehow feel it – he couldn't say why, but it just seemed somehow _obvious_.

"The youngest foals are golden all over," Professor Kettleburn said, as Hagrid gently fed the filly a carrot. "That lasts for… Mr. Thomas?"

"Two years?" Dean asked.

"Quite correct," the Professor agreed. "This particular unicorn is between two and four years old, because..?"

Lavender Brown said that it was because she didn't have a horn yet, and added that it wasn't until they were seven years old that a unicorn's coat turned pure dazzling white.

There were other things they covered or revised in the lesson, mostly about how unicorns were tremendously fast and very little would hunt them, and how they were _so_ pure that anyone who harmed a unicorn willingly was effectively cursed.

"How do you get unicorn horn for potions, then, Professor?" Draco asked.

"An excellent question!" Professor Kettleburn said brightly. "Like unicorn tail hair for wands, the unicorn horn found in potions is willingly shed; _unlike_ unicorn tail hair, it is shed rarely. It is expensive precisely because it is so hard to acquire."

Harry was thinking about that for the rest of the lesson, and about dragon heartstrings, and what that would mean for making wands if more dragons were smart like Nora, Gary, Sally and Ollie were. Charlie had already told him they only took the bits from dragons who'd already died, but would they have to ask dragons if they were okay with their bits being used after they were dead?

It was sort of an icky topic, really, but it was one that Harry knew had to be thought about some time. Just ideally not during, say, Herbology (which was his final lesson of the day) where they had to focus more on the dangerously poisonous aconite.

Harry _did_ sort of wonder how June and Matthew would get on with aconite, which was also known as wolfsbane. As descendants of a werewolf, would they be okay or get even _more_ poisoned than most people would?

Hopefully they'd be careful next year. Or whenever it showed up in Potions for them.

* * *

Wednesday morning was mostly notable for the first Arithmancy lesson of the year, and it seemed that their focus for the first few weeks was going to be on the properties of what were called chaotic systems.

Harry found this particular topic neat because it was how you could start off with almost exactly the same situation and end up with things coming out very differently depending on small differences in the setup.

Professor Vector demonstrated with a special set of four pendulums (or pendulas?), each of which were made of two long metal rods with a joint in the middle. She tapped each middle joint and the end of each second rod with her wand, sparking them off so they glowed, then raised all four up magically so they were held out horizontally and let them go.

At first they swung in just about the same way, but within seconds each set of double-jointed rods was swinging in a completely different way.

"As you can see, the behaviour is _divergent_," Professor Vector explained. "From now on, when we modify and model spell formulas we will be looking for divergent behaviour. This usually indicates a very hard spell to cast, while a spell formula where slight differences do not matter is usually an _easy_ spell to cast."

Hermione's hand was already up, and Professor Vector called on her. "Yes, Granger?"

"Is this the main reason why some spells can go catastrophically wrong?" she asked. "In First Year Professor Flitwick told us that mispronouncing a spell could end up with a buffalo on your chest."

"It's one reason, but there are several," Professor Vector told her. "We'll be looking later in the term at _bistable_ systems, which can also explain it – but some spell mishaps are simply unexplainable."

* * *

Harry was feeling quite positive after that lesson, and even through History of Magic (which fortunately wasn't as depressing as it had been earlier in the week), but at lunch another problem came sidling up to say hello.

The problem in this case arrived in the person of Tanisis, who said that the fourth year Ravenclaws had had their first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson that morning and she'd been barred from using her typewriter in class or for homework.

She said that Professor Umbridge had smiled brightly at her, and then told her that all students were to be treated equally and nobody was to get special treatment. Special treatment in this case apparently included being allowed to use a typewriter, and Harry quickly took a drink of apple juice to make sure he wouldn't start growling.

Tanisis went on to mention that Professor Umbridge had asked her for a riddle halfway through the class, that she (Tanisis, that was) had replied with one about a man who rode into town on Friday, stayed three days and left on Thursday morning.

"And then she looked straight at me in a kind of eager way, and said that the answer was that the man had got lost," Tanisis related. "I said it was wrong, the answer was that he had a horse called Friday, and she looked… not even disappointed, worse than that. Like for a moment she hated me."

"Bloody hell," Dean said.

Harry glanced down at his robes. "I _think_ I'm supposed to say language at this point."

"You're lucky I didn't say what I _first_ thought," Dean muttered. "Sphinxes are known for attacking people who fail riddles, right? Sounds like she got off really lucky."

"I don't do that," Tanisis said earnestly. "I do feel a bit upset, but I wouldn't attack someone over it."

"The question is, does _she_ know that?" Dean asked. "Maybe she didn't do Care of Magical Creatures."

Harry tried thinking about this a different way, lining up all the information so far, and his ears went flat.

"I think she does," he said.

He wasn't _sure_ about the conclusion he'd reached – it did still feel like one of those times in a book where you got told information and then it turned out it was meant to mislead you – but if he was right then he didn't dislike Professor Umbridge.

He _might_ discover what it was like to actually hate someone.

* * *

After lunch, but before Transfiguration – so technically still during lunch – Harry went to Professor McGonagall's office, having quickly checked the Map to see whether she was there or in the Transfiguration classroom. He was planning on knocking on the door to speak to her, but as it happened she came out right as he arrived at the door.

"Mr. Potter," she greeted him. "I do hope the Weasley Twins aren't breaking the rules already."

"They probably are, but I haven't noticed them yet," Harry replied, thinking about it. "But Tanisis Sanura in Ravenclaw has told me that Professor Umbridge didn't let her use a typewriter in class this morning."

He paused, wondering about mentioning the other thing, then decided he should. "And she said that Professor Umbridge asked her for a riddle, then got it so wrong it sounded deliberate."

Professor McGonagall's mouth thinned as she thought about that.

"Thank you for letting me know promptly, Mr. Potter," she said. "I will let the Headmaster know promptly."

She started walking towards Transfiguration, and Harry hurried to catch up.

He was going in the same direction anyway, so it wasn't much of a problem.

"And watch yourself with Professor Umbridge, Harry," she added. "That woman is here for a reason. You – and all of our other unusually shaped students – must be very careful."

Harry could agree with that, and told Professor McGonagall that he'd mention it to everyone in the Unusually Shaped Club – plus anyone who didn't attend, as well.

Then they reached Transfiguration, and the next couple of hours were taken up with Vanishing Spells. The spell got harder the more complicated the thing you were going to try and Vanish, and though Professor McGonagall started them on snails Dean asked whether maybe they should try and Vanish a glass of water instead.

That turned out to actually be easier, and everyone except Lavender Brown had managed it by the end of their class, though only about half had managed to move on from that to make the snail Vanish as well.

It seemed quite convenient to Harry, though he _did_ wonder whether you could use Conjuration to get something you'd Vanished _back_.

* * *

Astronomy was that night, which presumably meant none of the new Prefects from Fifth Year were on patrol on Wednesdays, and they were mostly focused on the Solar System this year – specifically Jupiter.

Ron mentioned how there was a Muggle space probe on the way to Jupiter and it was going to arrive later this year, which meant a five minute discussion about how it had been launched while Harry was about nine and didn't it take a long time for things to get around in space, and another ten minutes about how it had managed to get through the Asteroid Belt. (Very easily, because – unlike Saturn's Rings – the Asteroid Belt wasn't very dense.)

They stayed up until some time after midnight, taking notes on how the big Galilean Moons moved in sequence and how different they all were, then went back down to their dorms for the night.

* * *

The next day at lunch Conal told him that he'd been told to sit down during Defence Against the Dark Arts, and when he'd protested he'd had five points taken off for wanting special treatment. Then everyone else in Hufflepuff and Gryffindor had stood up as well, and done the whole lesson like that, which made Harry smile before assuring Conal that he'd pass that on as well.

"She's really out for a fight of some sort, isn't she?" Neville asked, shaking his head as Conal left. "It sounds like Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail got on okay, though."

"It wasn't easy," Flopsy said. "Mopsy kept biting our ears to remind us to stay quiet."

"Your ear, you mean, I was too busy writing notes," Cottontail countered. "Mouth writing is really hard after two years with a typewriter."

An idea tickled the back of Harry's mind, but then it was gone and he couldn't remember it.

"Professor McGonagall said that the most important thing was not to react too much to her," Harry contributed. "I don't think that means you ignore it, but you don't let it make you angry."

"Bit much to ask of Gryffindors," Neville snorted. "We'll do our best, Harry."

Then there was a cannon blast from the teachers' table.

"Attention, please," Professor Dumbledore said, flicking his wand a couple of times with his nail before putting it away. "I wish to announce a change in Hogwarts school policy."

He smiled. "Doubtless many of you in the younger years will have seen that some of your classmates are using typewriters to take notes or produce homework, and will have wondered what this fine clacky device that writes for you is. I am delighted to announce, as you have probably guessed, that it is called a typewriter."

Retrieving his wand again and drawing one in mid-air, Dumbledore continued. "You play it much as you would a piano, except of course that it has letters that go past G and it produces the sort of notes that go on parchment. I am delighted to announce that any student who would like to use one in class or for homework may get hold of one from myself or Professor Burbage, and the only delay experienced will be in acquiring sufficient typewriters and then bespelling them to not make such a loud clacky noise. All students may use them to write with both in class and out, though homework must of course be signed regardless."

With that, he sat down, then stood up again a moment later.

"Oh, yes," he resumed. "And may I very much recommend today's sausage rolls. I find them _delightfully_ moreish."

A rustle of talk spread as Dumbledore sat down for the second time, and Harry decided to try one of the sausage rolls to see if it was any good.

"Well, that's a relief," Cottontail sighed. "At least now we can stick to typing in all our classes."

It looked to Harry like most of his unusually-shaped friends were quite relieved by the announcement. Professor Umbridge, however, looked like she'd discovered her pumpkin juice had gone off.

Could you make pumpkin wine by doing that? Harry wasn't sure, but he imagined that if it was possible wizards had probably already done it – they just hadn't given any to Hogwarts students, because they weren't old enough.

* * *

The Oddly-Shaped-Society meetings took a bit of time to organize, partly because – like all the other clubs and societies – it couldn't start until after the first full week, so that new students and students with a different schedule could work out if they actually had free time available.

Harry was still fairly busy despite that, and he was hardly the only one – quite apart from Hermione's efforts to follow in Percy's footsteps and get twelve OWLs plus be a Prefect, which pretty much _required_ a Time Turner, Dean had his Art Club (where he said he might be the oldest person there next term, as there were no sixth years) while Ron was getting ready for Quidditch.

Neville was actually the least busy person in their little friend group, though even that was merely relative because he was still taking part in all their homework sessions and working on using a sword as well.

Sometimes Harry wondered if maybe he should have done Divination as well, because he'd probably have more free time at this point. That got him a bit confused though as he started thinking about what his schedule would have been like with a time turner since third year (and whether he'd have bumped into himself) and he was about to decide that it would be better to ask Hermione and Neville if they wanted to get the Arithmancy homework sorted out when a girl called Christine from First-Year approached him.

It turned out that even the first-years had had trouble in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Gryffindor had been paired with Slytherin this time, and the class had smelled of garlic in a way that had been obvious even to Christine – let alone, presumably, to Melody, who'd sat as far back in the classroom as there were desks.

Christine went on to say that while Isaac's typewriter had passed without comment Professor Umbridge had called on him for a question halfway through class and then cut him off for not answering when everyone could see he was halfway through writing the answer on a small portable chalkboard.

"Then Professor Umbridge told Melody off for talking," Christine added. "I didn't hear her talking, though! And she made Melody move to a different desk, one of the ones by the window where the sun was coming in."

She looked like she was swallowing a lot of things she wanted to say, then it came out in a rush. "I was _sort_ of scared of Melody at first, and I thought she'd get angry, but she just put on her one of those big hats we had to get and sat in the sunlight without caring about it."

Christine looked over at where Melody was sitting, in the corner of the room, and Harry followed her gaze before looking away again in case it would be rude.

He had to admit it was quite a Gryffindor thing for a vampire to do, to sit in the sun – even protected by a nice big pointy hat – and not mention it to anyone in authority. (Harry supposed he counted as authority at the moment.)

Of course, that meant it was also a slightly foolhardy thing to do, but that was Gryffindor as well.

Whatever the implications, Harry decided the best thing to do was send another letter to Dumbledore. He made sure to say that it wasn't _hugely_ urgent, because Melody wouldn't have another Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson until next Friday, but he was sure that Dumbledore would know what to do.

* * *

On Monday there was a sort of electrically charged feeling in the air, like there was about to be a thunderstorm.

Harry actually went and checked, flying up past the Astronomy Tower and well into the sky to check if there was a thunderstorm coming, but it seemed to only be a metaphorical one. He had the feeling he knew what it was going to be, and as the morning rolled past it seemed like everyone else was anticipating it as well.

Defence Against the Dark Arts started with everyone filing in and taking their seats, which was normal enough. Harry also made sure to stand up and say 'Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge' when she said 'Good afternoon, class' (on the grounds that there was no reason to be impolite) and while Professor Umbridge made them do it again because the first time hadn't been up to her standards she then told them all to sit down.

"All right, class, can you guess what we're doing today?" she asked.

Nobody said anything, and she tutted. "Oh, dear, we'll have to work on basic maths, it seems… today we're doing chapter two of your textbooks, entitled Common Defensive Theories and their Derivation, which starts on page seventeen. We will not be discussing it."

Harry wanted to point out that something like half the class was doing Arithmancy, but didn't. He opened the book to the point he'd got to last time, repressed a sigh (because, having got hold of one of the books that Remus had recommended, the contrast between that and _Defensive Magical Theory_ just made their actual textbook seem less interesting) and started reading.

Then, about fifteen minutes into the lesson, an owl flew in through the door.

Harry had never seen an owl quite like it. Some owls were eager and excitable, like Ginny's Pigwidgeon, while others were serene (like Hedwig) or vaguely superior (like Draco's big Screech owl). But this was the first owl Harry had seen that was _furtive_, and it sort of sidled into the room before dropping below the level of the desks and darting between them with sudden bursts of speed.

"Pay attention to your textbooks," Professor Umbridge told them, a little sharply.

To Harry's surprise, the owl deposited the letter it was carrying on his desk. It was a thick white parchment envelope, much thicker than he would have expected from a normal envelope, and he reached for it before Professor Umbridge coughed with an odd _hem hem_ sound.

"Mr. Potter, is that related to the class?" she asked.

"I don't think so, Professor," Harry replied.

He was about to explain he was going to put it in his bag, but Professor Umbridge spoke over him. "Then leave it alone until the end of class. Can you do that?"

Harry certainly could, and he went back to his textbook. The section he was in at the moment was about the way in which casting spells irresponsibly inside a building could cause damage to the walls and make it collapse, with calculations showing the impact of various spell impacts, and it was hard enough to follow that it took him a while to notice a sort of smoky smell.

Then the envelope exploded.

* * *

Bits of parchment went everywhere, some of them trailing smoke, and the rest of the smoke from inside the envelope formed a sort of plume that got in Harry's face and prompted him to flap a wing to clear it away.

He was still trying to work out what had happened when an extremely loud voice started to speak.

"**Slinkhard?"** it demanded, sounding rough and gravelly and very much like an amplified version of Professor Moody. **"They're teaching you out of Slinkhard?"**

Half of the class had jumped to their feet, and the other half were still seated, but everyone – Professor Umbridge included – was starting at the cloud of red fragments hovering over Harry's desk.

"**Why on earth are they using Slinkhard?"** Moody demanded. **"Slinkhard was writing fifty years ago and his writing is so poxy dry he could use it to stun a Nundu!"**

The Howler – it had to be a Howler – went on and on, getting progressively ruder and more foul-mouthed, and Harry hadn't even heard some of the words Moody was using.

"**He was writing his logorrhaeaic screed for Aurors!"** the elderly wizard explained to them, at great length. **"For Aurors! His whole overcomplicated work is supposed to be read by dull-brained Hit Wizards and incompetent Aurors to tell them why they were causing too much collateral damage! Only a complete cardiganed moron with a cat obsession and no experience with children, no past Auror work and who hadn't**_** read**_** the thing**__**would think it was a suitable classwork book for fifth years, let alone first years!"**

Incongruously, Harry did think that that would explain a _lot_ about the book he'd been reading.

"**But there's a reason nobody listened to the idiot!"** Moody went on, after elaborating on what kind of person would have assigned the textbook to _first_ years. **"The half-wit cockalorum had never been in a proper spell fight in his life, he left out all kinds of common situations to try and prove he was right, and his supposedly better spells are completely impractical to cast in a duel let alone a real fight!"**

There was a long pause, just long enough that some of the class took their hands from over their ears, then Moody's amplified voice snorted. **"But you're not going to get me to take the job. Whatever fuzz-brained pillock took it and assigned **_**that**_** book deserves whatever fate that jinx has in store for them."**

Then, mercifully, the Howler finally collapsed.

After a long, stunned pause, someone started to giggle nervously.

That rippled out, setting off the rest of the class, and Harry did his best not to laugh but it was too hard to stop it from bubbling up and making him snigger as well.

"Hem _hem_," Professor Umbridge coughed. "If we are all _quite_ finished?"

She kept going without waiting for anyone to react. "Now, you're all going to be big boys and girls and go back to reading your textbook, aren't you? And Mr. Potter, I do not tolerate disruption in my lessons. See me after class."

"It wasn't his fault!" Ron protested.

"Mr. Weasley, did I ask you to speak?" Professor Umbridge asked.

"Well, now you did," Ron replied. "And that was a Howler, Harry didn't-"

"We will be discussing that after class," Professor Umbridge insisted. "Now concentrate on your textbook and don't speak out of turn again."

* * *

Harry didn't think anyone really concentrated on the book for the rest of the class.

He knew _he_ wasn't, his ears still ringing with the echoes of Moody's extremely loud course material review, and occasionally he heard someone mutter one of the insults Moody had slung around to someone else and prompt a pair of giggles. Which he supposed meant that almost everyone was sort of speaking out of turn.

Eventually the end of the lesson came, and Harry stayed behind as requested.

Professor Umbridge waited until the rest of the class had left, then smiled at Harry.

It didn't seem like a nice smile, to Harry. There was a kind of happiness in it, but he sort of knew it wasn't directed at _him_.

"Mr. Potter, you are a Prefect," she began. "That means that you know how important it is for people to behave in a class. Don't you think that's right?"

"I think so, Professor Umbridge," Harry replied. "I don't think I know everything yet though."

Professor Umbridge tittered. "Well, that is why wizards go to school."

She leaned closer. "Now, my class today didn't go well at _all_, did it? And do you know why that was?"

"I think it was the Howler, Professor Umbridge," Harry answered.

"That's correct!" Professor Umbridge told him, sounding like she was very pleased that a small boy (or possibly dog) had unexpectedly done the right thing instead of the wrong thing. "And since the Howler was sent to _you_, and since I can't punish that _terribly_ rude Alastor Moody, I'm going to have to give you detention tonight instead."

Harry felt sort of like he'd turned over two pages at once. "Sorry, Professor Umbridge?"

"We _did_ agree that behaving in class is correct?" Professor Umbridge said. "And so _someone_ has to get punished for disrupting class, or _everyone_ is going to think they can just do whatever they want!"

That was one of the things where Harry wasn't _sure_ it made sense, but he supposed a detention wasn't _that_ big a punishment. And maybe it would be good to get an idea what a detention was like before he ended up having to supervise one in his position as a Prefect.

What did you do in detentions anyway?

Perhaps it would just be a punishment so that it _looked_ like he was having consequences.

"Good," Professor Umbridge said, after a few seconds – Harry hadn't replied, but that didn't seem to matter. "Be at my office at 8pm sharp, and I will not tolerate lateness."

"Tonight, you mean, Professor?" Harry checked, frowning slightly as he tried to remember the patrol schedule.

He'd had last Monday, and he had next Monday, but he didn't have this week.

"Is it an inconvenient time, Mr. Potter?" Professor Umbridge checked, smiling.

"I don't think so, Professor," Harry replied.

He wasn't _entirely_ sure about why she seemed ambivalent about that answer.

* * *

AN:

Writing Umbridge is an interesting experience.


	71. An Unusual Disciplinary Situation

Harry turned up outside Professor Umbridge's office about five minutes before eight, or at least that was the time according to both his watch and a _Tempus_ spell he cast. (Well, he cast two, and the first one said that the time was two fifty-six, but after a moment of confusion Harry realized he'd been thinking about a book that took place in New York and so had got American time.)

The door opened about ten seconds before the hour, and Professor Umbridge looked out with a bright smile.

"Ah, _there_ you are!" she said, as if she'd been the one waiting. "In you come."

Harry took the invitation, looking around with interest.

When their Defence Professor had been Gilderoy Lockhart, he'd filled the room with things about himself – from the extremely rare experimental Firebolt he'd been given to his own fiction-disguised-as-fact books with him on the cover. Then there'd been Remus, who'd instead used the Defence Against the Dark Arts office to prepare for Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons.

Harry hadn't seen most of the others, but he assumed they were sort of somewhere in the middle – some things about themselves, some things about their class. He didn't know, though, and so Professor Umbridge's office was an interesting third example.

It looked a lot like someone had read one of Aunt Petunia's magazines on how to make a house look absolutely wonderful – a kind of absolutely wonderful that involved lacy covers, cloths, vases of flowers and knick-knacks, but didn't really allow for people to sit down and put things on tables and actually _use_ the space.

An entire wall was covered in a rather amazing collection of ornamental plates with moving kittens on them.

In a way, you could sort of view it as a good Defence lesson. Professor Umbridge's pink cardigan blended in to the rest of the room, a bit like a predator hiding in ambush. (Though you didn't really need that lesson after a year of Mr. Moody as the Defence teacher.)

"Good evening, Mr. Potter," Professor Umbridge added.

"Good evening, Professor Umbridge," Harry replied, politely. "What sort of thing do you want me to be doing for my detention? I've never had one before."

"Now, now," Professor Umbridge said, tittering. "Manners, Mr. Potter."

She indicated a straight-backed chair and a small table. "Well? Sit down."

Harry sat, finding the chair a bit uncomfortable, and half-unfurled his wings a couple of time before managing to find a properly comfy position that didn't seem like it was going to rip part of the upholstery.

"You will be writing lines, Mr. Potter," Professor Umbridge went on, placing a piece of parchment and a quill in front of him. "That sounds simple enough, doesn't it?"

Harry had to admit that it did. It was the sort of thing that turned up in old books about people going to school – the Enid Blyton sort – though maybe it was done at Hogwarts as well?

The best people to ask would probably be Fred and George, though getting a correct answer out of them would be another thing entirely.

Harry inspected the quill, which looked like quite a fine-quality and sharp one, then checked the desk.

"Professor Umbridge?" he asked. "There isn't an inkwell."

"This quill doesn't need one, Mr. Potter," Umbridge told him, sounding amused and watching him closely. "I want you to write, _I will not disturb class._"

Harry waited to hear how many times he had to write it, then picked up the quill in one paw. "Is it going to be for an amount of time, or a number of lines?"

"I'll tell you when to stop, Mr. Potter," she said, with a peculiar _lilt_ in her voice.

Harry shrugged his wings slightly, and started writing.

There was a vague sort of itching on the back of his paw, for some reason, and no ink… then the quill caught fire.

"What?" Professor Umbridge shouted, the enjoyment entirely gone. "What did you _do_, you stupid beast?"

Harry reached for his wand, not sure whether to cast a flame-freezing charm or something else, then decided to try and put the quill out with a jet of water instead. That was a spell he'd learned years ago, including to cast it with his breath – it had taken a while but everyone had agreed it would be safest if he could put out fires easily – so he inhaled, then spat out a jet of water with a mumbled _"Aguamenti!"_

The spray of water hit the quill, and the table, and some of it bounced off and sprayed the wall with all the cats on it. They fled their plates with meows and mrowls of terror, their differently-coloured bow ties going with them, and Professor Umbridge only just escaped the blast.

When the fire was finally out, there was a sort of long moment of silence, punctuated only by the sizzling of the still-hot quill in a puddle of water.

"What did you _do_," Umbridge repeated, this time in a voice of intense loathing. "That was the only one I had!"

"I've got a quill in my bag?" Harry offered. "Sorry about what happened to your quill, Professor Umbridge, but if you've only got one quill then I can give you one now and another one tomorrow morning – it's not a bother."

He may not have liked Professor Umbridge, but if she really was that poor then it seemed like the polite thing to do to help her out.

Professor Umbridge just stared at Harry for several long seconds after that.

"Get out of my office," she said, eventually.

* * *

"Oh, there you are," Ron said, when Harry climbed back through the portrait hole at about ten minutes after eight. "Blimey, short detention."

"It didn't really go as I was expecting," Harry replied. "She told me to write lines, but then the quill she gave me caught fire. I put it out, but she seemed really angry anyway and just told me to leave."

"Weird," Hermione summarized. "Well, you're here now. We've still got that Transfiguration homework to finish?"

"I kind of thought that learning to turn into a squirrel would _help_ with Transfiguration," Ron grumbled.

"It's extra credit," Neville pointed out. "You still need, you know… regular… credit? Is that how it works?"

"Probably," Dean said. "Okay, so… Vanishing spells, right?"

* * *

Harry kept turning over the events of his extremely truncated detention in his head, sort of in the back of his mind, for the whole of Tuesday.

It felt like there was something there he wasn't getting. Professor Umbridge wasn't very nice, and she certainly didn't like what she thought of as beasts, but when he tried to think about what had happened as if she was a really nasty person he just couldn't work out what she'd been trying to do.

But when he tried to think about it as if she _wasn't_ a really nasty person he couldn't understand why she didn't just have him write with a normal quill.

Runes helped distract him from it, because they were practicing how to write extremely carefully so that they would be able to outline sufficiently accurate Runes on their coursework, but Care of Magical Creatures wasn't nearly so helpful because it reminded him of how Professor Umbridge thought of magical creatures – especially the ones with wands.

And in Herbology Harry's conversation with Justin over a peculiar little plant called _mimbletonia _somehow ended up talking about what punishments were like in Muggle schools. Harry sort of remembered from Matilda that there were really nasty _ways_ that an inventive horrible person could come up with to punish a pupil, but at least those seemed unusual instead of like they were in older books (where hitting someone with a cane was quite normal).

Then Justin told Harry about someone called Molesworth, and Harry decided to see if he could find one of that sort of book in a bookshop or library or something.

* * *

"Did you hear about what happened in Defence Against the Dark Arts today?" Flopsy asked, during dinner.

"Oh, not again," Neville sighed. "What's _with_ that woman?"

"She might actually be worse than Lockhart," Dean agreed. "And Lockhart was a total fraud who had us write poetry."

Mopsy and Cottontail gave them an odd look, but Flopsy had already started explaining. "There was a bit of talking, or there _might_ have been a bit of talking, and Professor Umbridge asked everyone to stop, in a kind of sweet you're-a-puppy kind of voice – then she asked Conal who had been talking."

"_Had_ Conal been talking?" Harry asked, fairly sure the answer had to be no, and thinking that the Barlos sisters would have the best idea of who _had_ been talking.

"Don't think so," Mopsy told him, shaking her head. "I didn't hear it, and I was sitting only a couple of seats down."

"But he couldn't answer," Flopsy went on. "And so she gave him detention for it, saying that she wasn't going to let people defend their friends from punishment like that because it wouldn't be fair."

"Then she asked anyone who'd actually _been_ talking to own up, and nobody did," Cottontail finished. "She said he had to show up at five, so he's probably already doing detention… unless it's like your one and it was over really quickly."

"This is just weird," Ron contributed.

Harry had to agree.

* * *

He had a lot of homework that evening, and also got distracted for half an hour or so by needing to sort out an argument between two second-years (there'd been a mix-up which had resulted in one accusing the other of stealing socks, but Harry had been able to get a House-Elf by the name of Cassy to clarify what had happened), so it wasn't until nearly midnight when he was about to talk to Empress that Harry checked the Marauders' Map.

To his great surprise, Conal was still in Professor Umbridge's office, and he left a few minutes later to go straight down to the Hufflepuff dorm room.

Harry flicked the Map up to check on Professor Dumbledore's room, and saw that he was in his office and that he was alone. A bit more checking showed that he was in his office and _not_ in the bedroom, so Harry got his wand out and cleared his throat.

"_Expecto Patronum,"_ he incanted, and Ruth erupted from the tip of his wand before turning to hover expectantly in front of him. "Headmaster, I think Conal has just done seven hours of detention with Professor Umbridge for not telling her who was speaking in class. That seems like a lot."

Ruth promptly vanished, and Harry waited to see if Dumbledore was going to ask him anything before eventually deciding to contact Empress.

* * *

On Wednesday morning, at breakfast, Dumbledore stood up.

He didn't say anything, or make any kind of noise, but just stood there in his purple and gold robes with a faint smile. The normal hubbub of breakfast conversation slowly died away, as people noticed, and once it reached a certain point people began looking around for _why_ it was quiet and the sound all went away at once.

"I am sorry to disturb you breaking your fasts," he said, once everyone was looking. "But I am afraid I must announce a few more school rules – this time regarding the subject of _detentions_. To be precise, and in case there is any confusion, a detention at Hogwarts cannot take more than two hours and it is not permitted for any detention to involve either significant physical discomfort or any sort of serious risk."

He smiled pleasantly. "Naturally all this is the sort of thing I would hope would be obvious anyway, but I feel it should be said out loud. I also want to make it as clear as I hope it would have been anyway that writing lines and cleaning cauldrons are not things which involve significant physical discomfort. My apologies to certain twins amongst us."

"Rats," Fred said, which Harry suspected was the worst expletive available to any Weasley after their recent family history.

Dumbledore then swept his hand out to one side, indicating Professor McGonagall. "I believe that my colleague also has something she wishes to announce."

"Indeed I do, Albus," Professor McGonagall agreed. "If someone from Gryffindor has been given a detention which they honestly feel they do not deserve, then they can bring it to me and ask for me to supervise it instead. If the detention truly was for a frivolous reason, you can expect to be treated accordingly."

Her mouth thinned into a fine line. "I will not, however, allow people to get out of justly deserved punishment this way, and someone who tries to take advantage of me will not enjoy the result."

"I'll do the same for my House," Professor Sprout said, standing up, and Professor Snape nodded silently in a way that probably meant he was saying the same.

Harry couldn't see Professor Flitwick at first, partly because when he stood up the difference wasn't very noticeable, but when he leaned around where Ron was blocking his view he saw that Professor Flitwick was floating his cushion in the air.

"An excellent idea!" the Ravenclaw Head of House said, nodding. "In fact, a very appealing idea!"

Several people groaned, Harry among them.

* * *

After the second announcement in less than a week, there seemed to be a kind of drop in tension.

Maybe Harry was just imagining it, or something, and since he wasn't in all Defence Against the Dark Arts classes (or indeed any of them except his own) it might just have been because he hadn't seen Professor Umbridge since the second announcement except at mealtimes.

He did make sure to check on Conal in the first Unusually Shaped meeting, and the Hufflepuff colt said that his hand had hurt a bit from writing what must have been more than a thousand lines during his prolonged detention. There didn't seem to be any marks, so it was probably just muscle strain or something, and Harry told him to let Madam Pomfrey know to see if she could help.

Some of the rest of the same meeting was taken up with talking about Melody and how she was going to learn to fly (which was usually an outdoors pursuit, after all), and Harry thought maybe she'd have to be careful during the basic lessons and then do lessons during the evening in winter when days were much shorter. That depended on if Madam Hooch thought it was okay, but then again Harry was _pretty_ sure Madam Hooch only had two classes a week so she could probably make the time.

Then there was a bit of a worry about what it was going to be like when Tiobald reached his OWL year, because some of the questions in OWLs were ones where you had to answer them out loud.

It seemed as though the simplest, albeit silly, solution would be to have both the examiner and Tiobald himself stick their heads in a paddling pool. (It was a bit of a work in progress.)

* * *

Just after breakfast on Sunday morning, Harry was on his way back upstairs when Draco Malfoy stepped out onto the landing in front of him.

"Potter," he said, as Vincent and Gregory stepped out either side of him. "I was looking for you."

"Draco," Harry replied, waving. "Is something wrong?"

He tilted his head a little, thinking about it. "Oh – do you want to go and see the dragons? I don't know if you've been going yourself, but if you haven't it must be months."

Draco looked a little surprised, then frowned, then finally nodded.

"Yes, Potter," he said. "That sounds like a good idea."

He waved at his two friends. "You two can go."

"But you said you wanted us for support?" Vincent asked, puzzled.

"Plans change, Crabbe," Draco informed him. "Very well, Potter. Lead the way."

"Actually the shortest route is behind you," Harry informed him helpfully. "If you go down that corridor to the tapestry of hopping frogs, behind it is a passageway that goes straight to a hidden postern gate. It's one of the ones that skips two floors."

Draco looked behind him, then shrugged and turned around.

* * *

The trip down to where the (other) dragons stayed was quite a pleasant walk, really.

It was still generally warm and sunny, and though there were clouds on the horizon which made it look like it might rain later that was still only a distant promise. It was the sort of weather that made Harry want to take off and fly, but that would be rude – he could do it later – so he stayed on the ground and asked Draco how he was getting on as a prefect.

By the sounds of things, Draco was finding it quite easy to be a prefect. That surprised Harry a bit, because he would have thought that Slytherin (being the house for people who were cunning and sneaky) would be more likely to sneakily break rules, but then he thought about it and realized that there were at least three reasons why that original guess might have been wrong (though not all of them would be going on at once).

Firstly, if someone was sneaky and didn't cause trouble because they were doing their rule-breaking in a way nobody noticed, then you wouldn't need to deal with it as a prefect because – well, nobody noticed. Harry supposed you really _should_ try to catch someone, in situations like that, but he could see why it might not work out quite as planned.

Then, secondly, there was that Draco was probably especially good at _working out_ things like that. He was a fifth-year Slytherin who'd been picked as prefect, after all, and one of the reasons for that might just have been that he was good at working out what was going on.

Thirdly, there was how you could say the same sort of thing about _every_ House in a different way. Gryffindors were more likely to be reckless, Ravenclaws were more likely to do things in a really clever way (albeit not a sneaky way?) and as for Hufflepuffs, well, stereotypically a Hufflepuff wouldn't stop doing something just because they got punished for it if they thought it was the right thing to do.

And, fourthly – Harry had come up with four, not three, he'd decided now – there was that all that was just stereotypes anyway. Peter Pettigrew had been a Gryffindor, and with how he'd turned out you'd never have known, while Regulus Black had been a Slytherin and his brother had been completely surprised.

* * *

Ollie was the first to notice them, coming down in a dive before flaring his wings and landing with a hard _thump_ – which, fortunately, he'd aimed so that he landed well short of the two prefects.

All three of the younger dragons were quite _big_ now.

"Remember you!" Ollie announced, walking a little closer and giving Draco a sniff. Draco's expression turned a bit pinched, but he didn't move, and Ollie gave him a slightly confused look before turning to Harry. "Smaller?"

"He's not smaller, you're bigger," Harry told him. "You think he's smaller than you remember because the last time you saw him _you_ were smaller."

Ollie's muzzle crunched up in ferocious concentration, then he nodded. "Bigger now!"

"What is he saying, Potter?" Draco asked, still trying not to move very much at all.

"He's just confused why you seem smaller now," Harry explained, turning to face Draco. "It's easier to understand that you're growing up and that's why everything seems smaller when it's happening a bit at a time."

He suddenly had an idea. "Do you want to introduce yourself to him?"

"Do you mean in English?" Draco checked. "Or in – what was it – Dragonish?"

"The second one," Harry told him. "Okay, so in Dragonish your name is-"

He turned to face Ollie, and continued. "-Draco."

"Draco," Draco repeated, trying it out.

"I think you should use both the English and Dragonish versions," Harry added, as Ollie watched in polite confusion. "So he knows both of them mean you."

* * *

Draco didn't get his name right every time, and Harry had to step in to help correct him a few times. That had sort of an interesting effect, because after about four times Ollie very visibly got what was going on and started correcting _Draco_ on what his name was, though it took another couple of times before Harry was sure that Ollie knew that Draco was Draco.

Then they did it in English.

Then Gary showed up, and then Sally, and finally Nora (though Nora already knew Draco) and Harry walked Draco through saying that his name was Draco and it was nice to meet them.

"So, Potter… this dragonish language," Draco said, after Sally had got a bit distracted and started drawing something in the ground, and Nora had started trying to explain to her in a bright and pleasant way what numbers were. "Isn't it a bit confusing that my name is just… well, dragon?"

"It's not, really," Harry told him, and started looking back and forth between Draco and Gary to make sure his language switched at the right time. "Draco is Draco and dragon is dragon."

"Those sounded the same," Draco complained.

"They do to Hagrid, as well, and he speaks quite good Dragonish now," Harry said. "And if I say Light in Dragonish with my wand nothing happens, but if I say Lumos it does work even though they're the same word. I _think_ it's magic."

Draco looked unsatisfied, so Harry clarified. "You know. Like Mermish."

"I haven't learned any Mermish and I'm hoping not to, it sounds dreadful," Draco muttered. "Anyway, Potter… there was something I was hoping to discuss with you, and this is as good a place as any."

Harry looked politely curious.

"I think we can both agree, Potter, that the teaching of Defence Against the Dark Arts this year is simply not good enough," Draco began. "I've heard from the upperclassmen that it was worse before, and it's true that we had that fop Lockhart in second year – and I would like to express my appreciation for getting rid of him, by the way – but this is our OWL year and I simply won't stand for it."

"Professor Umbridge isn't very nice," Harry had to admit. "And I suggested what I thought her lesson was going to be like but she just told me to sit down and be quiet… so that's probably not happening."

"Exactly," Draco confirmed. "Unfortunately, unless she does something even _worse,_ I think we're stuck with her. I wrote to Father to ask him to sack her, but his owl arrived this morning and there just aren't the votes to do anything about her."

"There aren't?" Harry asked, surprised.

He frowned. "Actually, how _do_ teachers get fired at Hogwarts?"

"Well, Quirrell just went away one day," Draco said, counting them off. "Mad-Eye quit in the middle of a lesson, and Lockhart got arrested. I actually think being arrested or leaving as an invalid might be the most normal ways."

He looked up at the castle. "Doubtless Dumbledore could fire her, but you heard him at the opening speech. She got hired because _nobody_ else wants the job – well, nobody else except Professor Snape, but he's needed in Potions."

"That does make sense," Harry agreed. "But why do you want to talk to me about it?"

"Because I, Potter, have had an _idea_," Draco explained. "If we can't get rid of a useless Professor, what do we do instead? We ignore her."

Harry wasn't sure he followed, and said so.

"There's nothing in the school rules that defines what a school club can be about, so long as it isn't one of a few specifically banned things," Draco explained. "I checked. And there's nothing at _all_ that's banned about having a club to practice Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"So… you're talking about setting up a Defence Club," Harry said, thinking about it. "And having people attend _that_ to learn Defence instead of the classes?"

"Exactly," Draco agreed, sounding quite pleased with himself. "Oh, we should probably still go to the classes, so she can't complain, but if we're learning Defence in a club, what can she do?"

Harry couldn't think of anything.

He didn't think that meant _Professor Umbridge_ couldn't think of anything, but, well, maybe there just wasn't anything she could do.

"So you think I should be part of the Defence Club?" he asked. "Do you mean teaching or learning?"

"Both," Draco answered. "You see, Father reassured me that I could learn Defence over the Christmas holiday, but that's a dreadful way to spend Christmas and it would only work for me."

He smirked. "I couldn't invite _everyone_ around for Christmas. We don't quite have enough rooms."

Harry had never seen where the Malfoys lived, but he imagined they wouldn't have that many rooms either – not unless they lived in a castle as big as Hogwarts themselves – and chuckled at the joke.

"But I know about your godfather, and of course his friend is Mr. Lupin," Draco explained. "So I'm sure you already know more about Defence than most of us."

He looked sly. "And, more importantly, if _I_ start the club then everyone thinks of it as a Slytherin club. But if _you're_ involved with starting the club then _everyone_ is going to want to come – including whoever happens to be best at Defence – and we can work out which people teach each year. If you and Diggory and Granger are there then all by itself that's better than what Umbridge can teach us."

Harry frowned, thinking about it. "Remus – Mr. Lupin, that is – did suggest a book series to me, and it was pretty good when I checked it. _Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts – _I haven't finished reading through, but I was expecting to read them over the whole term. Maybe we could use that as the textbook?"

"I knew it was a good idea to get you involved, Potter," Draco declared. "So, what do you think?"

The idea was definitely tempting. It was a bit like the sort of thing that would happen in one of his novels, albeit in a sort of different way – it had the feeling of some of the church politics bits in _The Sapphire Rose_, or in the Tamuli books.

Which, honestly, was quite a good reason to say yes.

"I do want to make sure it's okay with Professor Dumbledore, first," Harry said.

"Oh, of course," Draco agreed readily. "If the headmaster agrees then it's going to be _impossible_ to stop this."

* * *

AN:

The actual canonical name of the thing is a Black Quill, and the actual canonical inventor is Dolores herself.

This is _not_ an actual canonical use of dragon's blood, but it probably works.


	72. Dumbledore's Barmy

Harry ended up spending quite a lot of Sunday talking to people and sorting things out, and a bit of it writing on some parchment as he tried to work out when people would be available.

Fortunately, after speaking to people from the other three Quidditch teams – Draco was in the Slytherin one so that was easy enough to work out – Harry was able to find one time slot where as many people as possible should be able to show up for the first club meeting, and after that it would basically be working out the schedule depending on how many people actually _did_ show up. Maybe only a few dozen people would and it could all be done in one go, or maybe it would be best to sort it out by House?

That was something Harry wasn't sure about.

What he _was_ sure about was that it was all a good idea. Dumbledore had listened quietly to the way Draco described it, then said that it was a splendid idea and he now rather wished he'd had it years ago.

That had made Draco look quite pleased with himself, which was good – and then Harry had started talking to other people to see what they thought, and got more or less the same sorts of reactions. Hermione sounded very interested indeed, and Cedric said that he'd been learning other ways to handle the Triwizard Tournament tasks all through the summer so he had a few ideas about what to do. Then June said that both she and Matthew would be quite glad of the chance to practice combat spellcasting, especially Matthew, and really there wasn't anyone who Harry spoke to at all who thought it was a _bad_ idea.

Except Ron, at first, because the idea of a club that Draco had been involved in setting up was something that made him a little bit suspicious. He had to admit though that the _concept_ was sound, and that Draco would find it hard to be any sort of git if there were basically _all_ the Prefects there at once. Including, say, Cedric.

What all that meant was that Harry was too busy on Sunday to actually go to Fort William to find any new books, but that was only a little bit of a pity – and, around seven in the evening, he decided that because he'd done so much hard work today it would probably be okay to treat himself to a bit of a bath.

* * *

The Prefect's bathroom, as it turned out, was one of those places like the Great Hall where there was a _lot_ of magic involved – and a lot of the Wizarding style where they didn't bother hiding how much they enjoyed luxury.

The bath was several feet deep, more like a swimming pool than anything, and not only was it lined with white marble but the sides were lined with bejewelled golden taps (interrupted only for a set of stairs to get out and a diving board, which was over the deepest bit of the pool). There were plenty of towels, as well – Harry's own towel didn't seem necessary when there were two dozen fluffy white towels in the corner – and even the lighting was provided by a candle-filled chandelier, though fortunately they looked like the sort of wizarding candles that didn't drip blobs of warm wax on someone trying to enjoy themselves.

Harry did wonder why there were so many taps. It was such a big bath that it would take ages to fill with one tap – it took long enough for a normal bath sometimes – but that didn't really explain why there'd be lots and lots of taps instead of just a few really big ones, so Harry wondered if maybe turning one tap would turn all of them on.

That was nothing like what happened, but what _did_ happen was – as far as Harry was concerned – much better.

Each tap was hot water mixed with bubble bath, but it was a different _kind_ of bubble bath in each tap, and they were all obviously enchanted. The first one that Harry turned on produced a really viscous blob of water that stayed static under the tap and which turned out to be solid enough to pick up and move (Harry tested it), though when he dropped it it burst like a water balloon and sent froth and suds flying everywhere.

Then there was one which rippled back and forth, sort of like waves with white bubbles on the crests, and Harry thought that if he filled the pool up with that one he'd sort of have a wave machine. But after that he found one which just bounced off the surface of whatever water was already in there, and then a mixture which constantly bubbled but the bubbles went _down_ instead of up.

Whoever had built the Prefects' Bathroom had been both extremely inventive and very good indeed at Charms, because every single tap that Harry tried did something different to the last. If he used it much more than a dozen times Harry thought he might start to learn what most of them did without testing, and then maybe he'd be able to have a preference and fill the bath the way he wanted… but at this point Harry was having too much _fun_ testing, and the bath was filling up anyway so he just got on with it.

* * *

After perhaps twenty minutes, Harry had a bath full of hot water, and he got in with a splash.

He'd originally planned to just luxuriate in it, but with how big the bath was (and with the thick layer of ice-like foam over the top) Harry decided to try a few other things instead. So first he swam a few lengths, then he cast a Bubble-Head charm, then he belatedly put his glasses by the side of the pool and used the diving board to dive in.

That made a nice big splash, and broke up the foam into bits, and Harry spent the next twenty minutes or so relaxing in the hot water at the bottom of the bath.

Really, it was a shame all baths weren't like this. He had the feeling everyone would be a lot cleaner.

* * *

History of Magic and Potions on Monday went by without anything really significant happening, except for when Blaise argued (at length) that any antidote potion was _improved_ by adding a bit of sprinkled bezoar on top of it.

Professor Snape told him in no uncertain terms that the supply of bezoar was not unlimited and he should not be simply adding it to everything as though it were a condiment, and Blaise said that at his house they had something like ten each, and it went on from there.

Still, they got their notes down about antidotes, so the lesson had gone quite well really.

Then after lunch it was time for Defence Against the Dark Arts, and everyone showed up before the end of lunch itself as part of some kind of unspoken agreement to make sure Professor Umbridge had nothing to complain about.

It certainly looked like a good idea. Professor Umbridge was still brightly smiling when she turned up, but it looked sort of brittle, and she swept past them into the classroom before inviting them in.

"Good afternoon, class," she said, once everyone was seated.

"Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge," all the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws replied.

"Take out your textbooks," Professor Umbridge told them. "If anyone doesn't remember, we're on chapter _three_. That's the one that comes after chapter two."

Harry got out his textbook, opened it, and found the place he'd actually got to.

"Mr. Potter, which chapter are you on?" Professor Umbridge asked him. "Do we need to explain how counting works again?"

"I finished chapter three, Professor Umbridge," Harry reminded her. "In our first lesson you said to read ahead if we'd finished a chapter."

"And did I say that today, Mr. Potter?" Professor Umbridge asked.

"No, Professor Umbridge," Harry conceded.

"There we are," Professor Umbridge said. "Now go back to chapter three and read it again. That's what we are doing this lesson."

Harry complied, and decided to get out some parchment and re-write the chapter in his own words as some notes to remember it more easily.

"Miss Li," Professor Umbridge invited, a few minutes later.

"What do we do if we finish the whole book, Professor Umbridge?" Su Li asked.

"Read it again," Professor Umbridge answered her.

"But-"

"Miss Li, if you or anyone else questions my class again I will be giving you detention," Professor Umbridge said. "You just need to sit down, be quiet, and read your textbooks. Unless any of you have problems with reading?"

Nobody said anything, and after ten seconds or so Professor Umbridge smiled.

"Then back to your textbooks," she said.

* * *

About fifteen minutes later, Harry had finished writing up the basic argument of chapter three.

Really, Harry thought the whole book could have been a lot shorter if Mr. Slinkhard had just outlined what he thought instead of going into all this detail. Maybe the detail was sort of needed for the whole 'proof' thing, but it did seem like he spent a lot of time going not very far.

Someone gasped, breathing quickly, then sneezed with a loud 'CHOO!'

"Detention," Professor Umbridge said sweetly.

"Professor?" Anthony Goldstein asked, putting his hand up.

"Mr. Goldstein, I hope I do not have to explain to _another_ prefect how important it is to have proper manners in class?" Professor Umbridge asked. "It should be easy for you to wait until I call on you. I thought prefects were supposed to be well behaved."

Anthony kept his hand up, and Professor Umbridge let him wait like that for almost eight minutes before finally calling on him.

"Professor, Mike only sneezed," Anthony pointed out. "You can't give someone a detention for sneezing."

"Mr. Goldstein, are you the teacher in this classroom?" she asked.

"No, Professor," Anthony replied.

"That is correct," Professor Umbridge told him. "That is because I am the teacher, and I can give detentions. If you try to tell me what I can and cannot do in class then you will be getting a detention as well."

* * *

Nobody said anything for the rest of class, but Harry could guess what they were thinking.

He sort of wondered if you could give a _teacher_ detention. And whether he should use his magic book cover to make it look like he was reading _Defensive Magical Theory _while actually reading something more worthwhile (such as almost anything).

* * *

At dinner, Harry spotted when Anthony took Michael Corner up to talk to Professor Flitwick. He watched, interested, and Professor Flitwick shot an astonished look at Professor Umbridge before saying something that Harry couldn't hear.

The conversation carried on for another minute or so, and then both boys returned to their House table. They looked happy, so that probably meant that Michael wasn't going to have to do a detention for sneezing.

Professor Umbridge didn't look pleased at the result, but then again Harry supposed it wasn't very likely she_ would_ be.

"Oh, Harry?" Ron said, drawing his attention. "Got a minute?"

Harry looked at him, and Ron explained. "I've got a test thing as part of my Runes project, and I'd like your help with it. What's a good time?"

"That depends how long it's going to take," Harry admitted. "Is it an evening thing?"

"More of a daytime thing, definitely," Ron decided. "I don't want to wake up loads of people. And… um, maybe half an hour? Maybe an hour?"

"What about Thursday morning, then?" Harry suggested. "I know that means getting up earlier than we normally have to on Thursdays, but if we do it before I have Care of Magical Creatures and you have Muggle Studies that might work."

"Oh, yeah, the free period," Ron realized. "Yeah, that would do, or, if I'm not ready by then we can just work out another time."

"You know," Fred said, with a contemplative air. "It occurs to me that if certain pink Professors keep handing out detentions, and nobody goes to them, she's going to be very lonely in the evening."

"Oh, Merlin, what are you planning now?" Ron asked.

"His name's George, not Merlin," George said. "And we're not planning anything."

"As far as you know."

"As a prefect, I want you two to know that you might get in trouble if you _are_ planning something that breaks the rules," Harry said, then thought about that.

"I mean, you knew anyway," he added. "Because of how many times you've been in trouble."

"And how many times we haven't, don't forget," Fred said. "But we got detention from everyone else… except for some of the other Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers. Actually, George, I think we should fix that."

"I don't think we can get detentions from teachers who've left, George," George said.

"Okay, so, I've been listening for a while now and I'm only more confused," Melody told them. "Which of you two is George?"

"What's a name, really?" Fred mused. "It's just a convenient label we use so that other people know how to get our attention. Am I not George? Is he not George? Are we all not, on a fundamental level, George?"

"No, you're Fred," Harry contributed. "That's George."

"Ssh, you'll give it away," George stage-whispered.

Really, this whole prefect thing did seem to partly be about making sure Fred and George were distracted. And given how easily they got bored, Harry _was_ slightly surprised Professor Umbridge hadn't already caught on fire.

Or possibly caught on sand, which was like fire but safer. An idea Harry wasn't going to mention to them in case they got ideas.

* * *

Harry's second patrol as a prefect was a bit less eventful than the first one, and though he checked Professor Umbridge's office it didn't seem like anything was happening there – well, except for Professor Umbridge being there, that was.

There was one thing that happened where Harry encountered Peeves, who was busily stacking up all the chairs in the Transfiguration classroom into a tottering pile that was just behind the door – so that when the door was opened it would bump into the pile and knock it over, sending chairs scattering everywhere.

When Peeves saw Harry, he cackled before zooming off into the distance and leaving the classroom booby-trapped. Harry's first instinct was to put all the chairs away in the right place again, but then he realized that if he did that he couldn't be sure that Peeves wouldn't just come right back and set it up all over again.

It took a few minutes of thinking about it, but Harry decided he should put the chairs back where they were meant to be and then go around using Sticking Charms on all of them to hold them in place. The spell wouldn't last very long, and it would have worn off by the morning, but if Peeves went right back there to check then he'd find the chairs immovable and probably get bored.

Just to be sure, Harry decided he'd also warn Professor McGonagall at breakfast. Then, with the only other person out after Curfew being another prefect, Harry finished his patrol and went back to the common room for an hour or so before bed.

He wanted to make sure he was up early on Tuesday.

* * *

Harry put up the first meeting schedule sheet for the Defence Club the next morning, right after passing on his warning to Professor McGonagall. It would have been a sign-up sheet, but since they didn't really know when it would be set yet he thought it wouldn't really be a good idea to ask people to commit to it.

There weren't any other clubs yet which were on Wednesday evening, with the closest thing to an overlap being Slytherin's Quidditch practice, and that ended a bit before the Defence Club meeting was scheduled to start so that made sure it was okay.

Actually outlining what the club _was_ was a bit trickier, but after some thought Harry had decided that the best thing was to say that it was a club for learning practical defensive magic. It would be sort of interesting to see how many people showed up, because by the time Harry left breakfast five or ten minutes later there were already a lot of people crowded around the sheet.

* * *

In the first class that morning – Charms – Professor Flitwick started off by outlining to them all the nature of the Colour Change Charm.

"This is of course quite a useful spell if you feel that your bag is quite pleasant, but could do with a better colour," Flitwick told them all, chalking the details on the board. "Or if you would like to see if peas taste better if they are a brilliant electric blue, of course!"

He smiled at them briefly, then went on. "The peculiar thing about the Colour Change Charm is that you can either cast it in the _basic_ way, where you must cast it carefully so that your _intent_ is what determines the colour, or you can cast it in an _advanced_ way where you specify what the colour is as part of the incantation and add an extra wand movement between steps two and three. This means you can get the same colour every time, though of course you must have the right word in mind."

Harry wrote that down, and watched as Professor Flitwick demonstrated – first casting the spell 'freehand', turning a piece of parchment from red to blue, then doing the same thing to a second piece of parchment to turn it from yellow to blue.

When he held them side by side, they were _almost_ the same, but just different enough to notice. Then the Charms Master cast the spell again with the extra wand-flick and the extra word (_'Aurantiaco'_) and both sheets became orange – exactly the same orange.

Ron put up his hand, and Professor Flitwick called on him.

"Hermione used a charm a lot like that to change the colour of my dress robes last year, Professor," he said. "But it didn't change it the whole way up. Is that something that can happen?"

"Indeed it is!" Professor Flitwick agreed brightly. "That is because the colour change spreads out from a point, you see, and you must be careful to make sure you cast the spell with enough conviction – but not too much, as otherwise you could end up with the colour being too bright. This is one of the reasons the named colour system is so useful as any excess spell force is dissipated."

He waited for them all to note that down, then paused. "Oh! And before I forget, I think it would be a very good idea for people to go to the new Defence Club that Mr. Potter has been involved in setting up. Now, we will be starting with the basic form of the incantation, and there is no need to focus on a particular colour just yet – simply try to get the colour as even as possible..."

* * *

Harry left that lesson wondering if he could cast _that_ spell with his breath, which would mean he'd be a dragon that could breathe _blue_, and wondered if there'd be any use for it.

Perhaps it would let him draw big patterns on the grass? It seemed a bit unfair on the grass, though less unfair than if he set it on fire.

Then in Runes it was all about translating rune schemes into effects, this time looking at old Norwegian rune stones to try and work out which ones were magical and which ones had been made by Muggles, and it was sort of interesting that a couple of the Muggle ones actually did have valid rune sequences on them which could have had quite a worrying effect if they'd been magically carved.

The one which Harry thought would have been constantly struck by lightning was an interesting one, for example. It would probably end up destroyed pretty quickly to avoid problems with the Statute of Secrecy, but it was still a cool idea.

* * *

Dumbledore made another announcement that evening, which was that those students who happened to share a body _could_ be required to serve a detention incurred by one of their fellow heads (or suchlike, he added), depending on circumstance, but that they were _not_ liable to serve multiple two hour detentions in sequence as the result of each being assigned a single detention.

Professor Umbridge looked quite sour about that one, and Harry could only assume that that meant that she'd actually been _planning_ it. It made too much sense for Harry to think she'd get upset about it if she hadn't already been planning on doing it.

Then he put it out of his mind and started running through the details of how Wednesday was going to go. Sirius had already sent him copies of the books about practical defensive magic, though only a few rather than dozens and dozens, and Harry had the feeling that most people wouldn't want to basically just have it be a book club anyway.

It was an interesting sort of puzzle, and Harry had to concentrate quite hard to _not_ think about it during the homework session that evening. There was a tricky question on Herbology that only Neville turned out to know the answer to – even Hermione was stumped – and Neville said that maybe it was something left in by accident, or something that was meant to find out if people were actually paying attention, or something like that.

Harry wasn't _sure_ that made sense, because you could just look up the answer in a library book, but he supposed that _maybe_ it made sense.

* * *

Later on, much closer to midnight, Harry talked to Empress about the defence club – and how it meant that he wouldn't have the time to talk to her tomorrow night, and depending on the schedule maybe several other nights.

"_I will be sad if that happens,"_ Empress pronounced, after thinking about it. _"But not, I think, as sad as you fear. I was alone with my thoughts for hundreds of years, except for the occasional visits by other Parsel speakers, and you have given me more new thoughts to contemplate than anyone else… and much lighter ones, as well."_

She chuckled, in a sort of sibilant way. _"I do hope to eventually be able to leave the Chamber of Secrets by day, and to speak to other people, but I am a patient snake."_

"I'm glad you're okay with waiting," Harry said. "I'd have felt really bad about it..."

He shook his head. "Shall we go on to where we were?"

"_I would like that,"_ Empress decided. _"I think that the apprentice Piemur had told Menolly that there was a market day?"_

"That's right, though they call it a Gather day," Harry confirmed. "But first there's a bit with Sebell – and his recently hatched fire lizard, Kimi."

There was a much more pronounced slithering sound, now, and Harry sort of pictured in his mind that Empress was getting herself properly arranged to listen to the story.

"On the top of the Fort Hold fire heights," Harry began, repeating the last paragraph from last time, "Menolly now saw the bright yellow pennant..."

* * *

After dinner on Wednesday, Harry went up to the Gryffindor common room for an hour or so to get some Arithmancy homework done. That was the only subject he had outstanding homework for which had to be finished before the weekend, so it made sense to get it done now, and Harry sort of noticed as he worked that the common room was emptying out a lot earlier than normal.

Normally it stayed busy until at least nine or ten in the evening, and usually the last people left not long before midnight to go to their Astronomy class that day, but tonight by about ten to seven there simply weren't many people there.

Harry had only a few equations left to solve when the clock did reach ten to seven, and he put his quills and things away up in the Fifth-Year dorms before grabbing his collection of practical defence books and leaving through the portrait hole for the first Defence Club meeting.

* * *

When Harry actually went through the door into the Great Hall – where the first club meeting had been set up for – he stopped in his tracks, quite astonished.

In his head Harry had been picturing something sort of like one of the more popular clubs he'd seen, like the book club, but maybe with two or three times as many people. Which would be quite a lot.

Instead, there was what seemed like almost the entire student body in the room. Easily two hundred students, maybe more, all sort of milling around and talking in small groups, and Harry happened to notice that Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape were still sitting up at the high table as well.

Professor McGonagall had a big pile of parchment in front of her and was calmly going through it, one piece at a time, while Professor Snape was reading what looked like the day's Daily Prophet.

"There you are, Harry," Cedric said, catching sight of him and coming over. "I'm impressed, I wasn't expecting _nearly_ this many people."

"Nor was I," Harry admitted, noticing that the conversations in the room were sort of going quieter. More and more people were turning to look at him, presumably taking his arrival as some sort of signal, and then Draco arrived as well through the door to the dungeons and that made most of the rest of the noise fade away.

It might have been that it had just actually reached seven in the evening. It might have been that most of the people who hadn't attended because _his_ name was on it had attended because _Draco's_ name was on it.

Or it might just have been that anyone who wasn't in a group where someone could see the entrance hall was probably in a group mostly facing the other way, which meant they could see the door to the dungeons. It was probably something like that.

* * *

"All right, let's get started," Cedric said.

He indicated Harry, who had been wondering how this was going to start for a while and decided to just go with his best guess.

"Thanks to everyone who turned up, and..." he began, then paused and corrected himself. "Which, well, I suppose anyone who heard that has turned up. So that's all I need to say about it."

Harry vaguely heard Draco say something about Dumbledore, but it wasn't clear enough to follow.

"We're probably not going to do any actual Defence Club stuff this time," Harry went on. "Partly because there's so many of us. The idea is that this meeting is when we work out what good times are, and then after that the actual club meetings are in groups that are a bit smaller – so Sixth and Seventh years, then Fifth and Fourth, then probably Third, Second and First. It might take a bit of time to work that out because we'll need to know what all the year schedules are like."

"And in case you're wondering," Draco said, when Harry had finished that bit of explanation, "the Defence Club isn't going to involve any actual homework, because we don't really _mind_ if you don't do well. I'm just interested in not failing my OWLs."

That brought a scattered bit of laughter, because while Draco was just saying what was true he was doing it in a funny sort of way.

"I don't mean that our Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is a bad teacher," Draco went on. "Because she's very good at teaching her curriculum. It just happens that her curriculum _happens_ to not align with anything anyone else wants us to be taught, and that includes the OWL examiners."

"Because there isn't going to be any of the teachers involved – at least, we don't think so – can I quickly check something first?" Harry asked. "If there's anyone who's interested in helping to teach others, either by reading up on spells and things for the other people in the club to learn or by teaching people in lower years, can you put your hands or paws up? We only need a few people."

Hermione put her hand up, of course, and so did a surprising number of other people. Harry saw Fred, Cedric, Morag (from Ravenclaw in the same year as Harry), Luna, Ginny, the Barlos sisters putting up a paw (and none of them looking surprised about it, which was what made Harry think that they were probably all volunteering at once) and several more besides.

"Merlin, _all_ of you?" Draco asked. "Do we actually need to do this club if everyone can teach themselves?"

"I don't _think_ everyone put their hands up," Harry said, which was true enough – when he checked Harry could see lots of people who hadn't volunteered – but there was a ripple of laughter anyway. "Okay, we need someone from each year so we can check when any after-hours classes are, and then we can work out when good times for the club are… it shouldn't take too long."

"I can move around Prefect patrol times if it'll make things easier," Cedric pointed out. "We already do that for Astronomy classes, so it's just going to be the same sort of thing again."

* * *

Getting all the timetable details took a bit longer than Harry was hoping, because there were some odd fiddly bits like NEWT level Astronomy and Ancient Studies (which was sort of like History of Magic crossed with Ancient Runes, and then crossed with Arithmancy, and finally crossed with Arithmancy again for good measure) that didn't fit the normal timetable.

Working out _where_ to hold the club was easy enough, because Draco had checked and found that there was a large room on the first dungeon floor previously used for storing dangerous creatures. It had apparently very briefly held a Zouwu, a Chinese magical creature able to distort space to move quickly, but then the creature had simply got out through the gap around the door and escaped – leaving behind a space big enough for dozens of students to practice magic at once.

As for the timetable, Hermione was able to help with that, saying that she had a lot of experience with working out good timetables. She listened to all the information, taking concise notes, and after about fifteen minutes every evening in the week except Sunday had a ninety-minute long slot for one of the three age brackets Harry had been talking about – which nicely gave everyone two choices about which one to go to if they couldn't do a slot. That was a much better way of doing things than moving everything else around to fit this one club, in Harry's opinion, and he thanked Hermione for her help before looking up at the ceiling and breathing out a quick blast of Bluebell Flames.

That got enough attention that everyone stopped talking amongst themselves quite quickly.

"Okay, we've got a schedule worked out," Harry explained. "There's a lot of choice, and you only need to go to the ones you want, so it should be nice and flexible."

Hermione tapped the parchment and muttered _'Xerographica'_, copying it, then stacked the original and the copy on top of one another and did it again. Each time she did the number of copies doubled, and she had enough to hand out to everyone within a minute.

Before they could actually start handing them out, though, the door opened with a _bang_.

Professor Umbridge did her level best to stride imposingly through. Harry thought there were a few small problems with her attempt to stride imposingly, one of them being that she had her usual smile on, and another being the pink outfit.

Another problem was the fact that it wasn't a dark and stormy night, of course – the sun had only just set, and the clouds overhead were lit up a glorious russet by the setting sun from behind the Cuilins on Skye. It not being a dark and stormy night made it a lot trickier to be ominous.

"Well, now," she said, pleasantly. (Harry suspected that she had to practice it in the mirror, like he had to practice non-toothy smiles in the mirror.) "What are you all doing down here so late, children?"

* * *

Harry was about to reply, but Draco beat him to it.

"It's a school club, Professor," he informed her.

Professor Umbridge looked around, still with that pleasant but slightly false smile, and then looked at Harry.

"And why have _you_ started a club, Mr. Potter?" she asked. "A club in what, exactly?"

"It's a Practical Defence club we started, Professor," Draco said.

"I was speaking to Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy," Professor Umbridge said, in a sing-song tone as if Draco was too young to understand her. "I'm sure Mr. Potter doesn't need you to speak for him."

Someone sniggered – Harry wasn't really sure who – and Professor Umbridge looked at him expectantly.

Harry wasn't entirely sure why. Draco had given a perfectly good answer.

"Well?" Professor Umbridge asked. "Why have _you_ started a club? Remember, Mr. Potter, good children speak when they are spoken to."

"It's a club to practice using spells for self defence, Professor," Harry replied. "And the ones which are likely to turn up on our OWLs and NEWTs."

Professor Umbridge didn't seem to like that answer _at all_.

"That sounds _very_ dangerous!" she said, in a syrupy way. "It sounds like you'll be getting _so many_ of the children at this school in danger..."

"Not really," Harry said. "A lot of it is going to just be making sure that people can _cast_ the spells, not necessarily _at_ someone. And aiming practice can mostly be done with the safe spells like stinging hexes and-"

"Mr. Potter, do you mean to say that you know better than the _Defence Against the Dark Arts_ professor at _Defence Against the Dark Arts?"_ Professor Umbridge asked.

"Well, no, Professor," Harry replied.

He was about to explain further, but Umbridge interrupted him. "Then why is there a _Defence Club_ when you already have a _Defence Against the Dark Arts_ lesson?"

"It's like Charms Club, Professor," Harry told her. "There's already a Charms lesson, and I wouldn't say anyone in the school was better at Charms than Professor Flitwick – except maybe Professor Dumbledore – but Charms Club has been going as long as I've been at Hogwarts, at least."

"Not bad, Potter," Draco said, very quietly indeed. Harry's ear twitched slightly, but he had the feeling that he was the only one who'd heard it.

"Well, _obviously_, Charms are safe," Professor Umbridge said.

"Does that mean we can practice Stunning Charms, Disarming Charms, Shield Charms and the Patronus Charm without worrying you?" Harry asked, wanting to be clear about that.

"Mr. Potter, do you want a detention for disrespecting a teacher?" Professor Umbridge demanded.

"No, Professor," Harry replied. "But I'm not sure how that's relevant? I was genuinely asking the question."

The whole rest of the room had gone almost completely silent, Harry noticed. He hadn't even heard any sounds of moving paper or parchment for a while.

"As the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher," Professor Umbridge said, after a pause, "I am not permitting this club to go ahead."

"That's not actually something you can do, Professor," Draco informed her. "Professor Dumbledore said that the club can go ahead, so the club can go ahead."

"Mr. Malfoy, I was not talking to you," Professor Umbridge told him. By now her nice sweet talking-to-children voice had sort of gone away, and she was gripping her wand quite tightly.

She took a step back. "I _do_ hope you won't be doing anything _dangerous_ in this club, Mr. Potter."

Harry assumed that that meant he could go ahead, and waved at Hermione. "Okay, Hermione's got the sheets with the schedule, so if people can start taking some and handing them out-"

"_Hem hem,"_ Professor Umbridge interrupted. "Don't you think that's dangerous, Mr. Potter?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, Professor," Harry admitted.

"Well, if you're going to be running a _Defence Club_ and you haven't even heard of paper cuts, how do you expect to be any good?" Professor Umbridge asked. "Perhaps I should take over running the club."

"But you teach your curriculum so well in your lessons, Professor," Draco told her.

"And it's the people who set up the club who decide how it's run," Hermione added. "Nobody can just come in and take over a club, but they can set up a rival club and if more people like how that one's run-"

"Quiet," Professor Umbridge said, shooting a glare at Hermione. "Nobody asked your opinion."

Hermione went silent.

She also turned into a velociraptor, which made Professor Umbridge jump. Her wand came halfway up, then she lowered it again and said nothing.

There were a few more seconds of silence, and then Harry decided he should try speaking again.

"There's two slots for each, so you can pick which one works better," he said. "If someone wants to help with the younger students, or in researching which spells the club is going to learn, can you gather together into groups to make sure that about half of you are in each-?"

"_Hem hem,"_ Professor Umbridge coughed again. "It sounds like this is _terribly_ disruptive to homework time. If students are going to spend so much time in a school club, doesn't that mean they won't get their homework done? That would be _dreadful_."

"I actually think Quidditch Club is worse," Harry told her. "I only did it for one year but that was the year I had the least free time."

"Besides, if anyone's so close to the edge that spending an hour and a half in a _voluntary_ club makes their grades collapse, and they keep doing it, I think OWLs can afford to lose them," Draco said, which sparked several giggles.

There was another pause, and Harry decided to keep going again. "If you want suggestions, I think a good start would be the Disarming Charm and the Shield Charm-"

"_Hem hem,"_ Professor Umbridge said, clearing her throat yet again. "The Disarming Charm is _far_ too advanced for anyone below fourth year. Perhaps this means-"

"Dolores, that will do!"

Professor McGonagall had stood up.

Her appearance seemed to come as a bit of a surprise to Professor Umbridge, who did a double-take, and it took her a few seconds to react beyond that. When she tried to say something else, though, the Gryffindor Head of House interrupted her before a single syllable had got out.

"Dolores, there are hundreds of students right here trying to teach themselves – in no small part because your curriculum is not giving them what they need for their exams. Any teacher would be delighted to see people so eager to learn, and yet you're spending all your time trying to find an excuse to shut it down."

Professor McGonagall went on for at least five minutes in the same sort of way, saying that the club was a good idea that shouldn't have been needed but that now that it_ was_ needed she was proud of everyone who'd come up with it and everyone who'd decided to attend.

It made Harry feel quite pleasant, really.

Finally she reached a conclusion, and after waiting to see if anyone else had anything to say Harry told everyone that the first session of the Defence Club would be for the NEWT students on Thursday and asked everyone who was volunteering to do the learning ahead-of-time to stay behind for a bit.

Professor Umbridge looked like what Harry had read in books was 'pole-axed'.

* * *

AN:

It turns out that it's a lot easier to organize this sort of thing if you're allowed to do so.

It turns out that it's a lot harder to disrupt this sort of thing if you have no special powers and all your co workers hate you.


	73. High Flying Dragon

The following morning, after breakfast, Harry went down to the side of the lake to meet with Ron.

He was sort of impressed with what Ron had put together, now he had a chance to see it. It wasn't a complete rocket – it was notably missing the pointy bit for a start – but the engine was there, and the body, and there was a little plastic bottle as well.

"That's the fuel, right?" Harry asked, pointing at the bottle.

"That's a little bit of the fuel," Ron agreed. "Dad and I had to make some – did you know Muggles use it to make their hair white? That's not a very strong version so we had to make it stronger, and it took ages, but I did learn that spell Mum uses to make more of sauces and stuff – so I can just use a drop of the stronger version and make loads of it, or enough for a test like this anyway."

Ron showed Harry the fuel tank, which looked sort of like a Thermos flask with rounded ends and a stand to hold it opening-up, and put a single drop of the peroxide fuel into it. Then he waved his wand at the fuel tank. _"Supplementum."_

"How did you get the fuel tank made?" Harry asked.

"Well, Percy helped with a lot of that," Ron admitted. "I worked out what shape it had to be, and Percy Transfigured it – it's made of aluminium, because that book you got me said that it was safe to carry hydrogen peroxide in that. And it's much bigger on the inside – that's _not_ the rune thing, the rune thing is going to be making it so the fuel just keeps coming back, but I want to make sure the test is long enough."

He checked his watch, then pulled his wand up and away. "That should be enough."

Harry had to help with the next bit, which was getting the little fuel tank into place inside the rest of the rocket without spilling any of the peroxide. He didn't really follow the mechanism of how the inside of the rocket worked – it was something to do with a metal mesh that made the peroxide fizz and break up into hot steam and things like that – but it sounded like Ron did, and he explained to Harry how to get the bits screwed together and then tighten the seal.

The only bit left to do was to lock the test rocket down so that it wouldn't go flying off and hit the Owlery or something, and for that Ron had some big chunky bolts that looked like the sort of thing you held a train together with.

"This is probably overdoing it," he explained, as Harry helped tighten the bolts – securing the rocket body to a conveniently large slab of lakeside rock. "But I think that's better than not overdoing it, right?"

"Right," Harry agreed.

Then they were just about done, and they retreated behind a rock. (A different one to the one they'd secured the rocket to, because otherwise it would have been a bad idea.)

"So for this one we're using the controls from a Muggle bike," Ron explained, showing him one of the squeezy brake things. "There's a spring holding the fuel pump closed, and you need to squeeze this to open the fuel line… which means that even if it _does_ break free, it's just going to stop firing the rocket and it won't go shooting off at faster and faster speeds."

He took a deep breath. "Ready?"

Harry nodded.

Ron squeezed the control.

There was an incredibly loud _whoosh_, which seemed to just keep going on and on, and at first there was a plume of white smoke – or, steam, if Harry was getting this right. Then the plume sort of went away, blown away by the rocket thrust, except that the plume kept getting bigger and bigger so there must have been more of it forming out of the thrust plume the rocket was making.

"Wow!" Ron said, his voice nearly drowned out by the sound. "That looks like it's doing well, right!"

"Yeah!" Harry replied. "The rock it's attached to is kind of rocking a bit!"

"What?" Ron demanded. "I can't hear you!"

Harry tapped Ron's hand and indicated the brake trigger Ron was still squeezing, and Ron let go. The racket from the rocket quickly died away, not quite turning off like a switch but going from **loud** to quiet in only a few seconds, and then there was just a big white cloud that slowly dispersed in the wind.

And several curious dragons coming over to see what was going on.

And, now Harry looked, there were lots of people peering out of the windows of the castle as well.

"That was louder than I was expecting," Ron admitted, a little bit sheepishly. "Still, it worked!"

"It worked," Harry agreed.

* * *

Professor McGonagall gave them a calm but firm talking-to about the amount of noise that had resulted, and Harry thought that – really, that was sort of fair enough. They _had_ made a lot of noise (certainly more than Ron had expected!) and while they couldn't really measure how much force it had produced Harry felt like it would be more than enough to lift a squirrel.

"You might want to have another one of those bigger-on-the-inside bags, though," Harry pointed out, after thinking about it a bit. "You know, like a parachute, only inside it's got a broom."

"That's a good point," Ron agreed, still speaking a bit loudly. "I'm already thinking about how I can control the rocket from a squirrel sized control capsule. I suppose I _could_ do it with charms, but learning silent charms – maybe even wandless ones with how big my wand is at that size – sounds more like a NEWT thing."

"It's never too early to work on NEWT level topics," Hermione said. "Harry's worked on NEWT level Charms and Defence. Right, Harry?"

"Well, there's Ruth," Harry agreed. "And some fire charms… and Aguamenti qualifies as well, I suppose."

"Sorry, can you say that again?" Ron requested, still loudly. "I didn't quite catch that."

* * *

The Defence Club that night was one of the ones for NEWT students, but Harry went along anyway. Partly that was to see what it was like this time, partly because Harry quite liked the idea of taking the chance to learn NEWT Defence, and partly because (as Hermione had reminded him earlier that day) he did know some NEWT level Defence spells.

He'd been reading the books Remus had recommended, which gave him a few ideas, and while he wasn't confident enough in _most_ of the spells they hadn't done in class to teach them – and he had the feeling a lot of them were more OWL than NEWT material anyway – he did still have the Patronus Charm.

Cedric was there, and he started off the club by quickly going through what Professor Moody had apparently told the NEWT students last year about how to 'lead' a target so your spell hit them. It was interesting, especially because of how you needed to do it by different amounts for different spells – some spells were good in a fight because the spell moved quickly, even though the actual effect wasn't very nasty – and Harry volunteered himself to be a moving target for people to do a quick bit of revision.

Bouncing spells off his wing and hide for ten minutes or so was quite exhilarating, and then to be fair they swapped it around so about half the students were casting spells (Harry among them) and the other half were dodging.

Then Harry suggested that one of the things they could aim to learn was the Patronus Charm.

Cedric actually already knew it – probably for the Triwizard Tournament, in case one of the challenges involved a Dementor or Lethifold or something – but he was really impressed that Harry knew it, and when he demonstrated everyone else seemed impressed as well. Perhaps it was how that felt, but Ruth seemed particularly lively, flying around in a circle a few times for everyone to watch before coming down to hover attentively next to Harry.

"It's kind of a tricky spell," Harry explained. "I don't think it's a good idea to just focus on it, because it took me ages to get it right and feeling frustrated just makes it harder to cast. But we can get started with the wand movement, and what about doing a bit of practice at it each week?"

That seemed to get general approval, and Harry spent the rest of the Defence Club showing people how to do the right wand movements for the Patronus charm.

It was sort of an odd feeling to be teaching people older than him, but Harry didn't _dis_like it.

* * *

In Friday's Runes lesson, Harry listened with one ear to Ron explaining just _why_ he'd made a very loud rocket engine.

Everyone had heard it, including Professor Babbling, and Ron told her his plans to show it off for OWLs by running it at high enough power for take-off – meaning the rocket would rise just a little way in the air, then hover for at least twenty minutes to prove that the runic fuel reproduction system was working fine.

It sounded like the examiners would be very impressed. And possibly _completely_ deaf.

Harry had his own project to work on, though, and right now that meant he was working on how to make a sword. It wasn't as hard for him as it was in some books – or in real life – because he didn't need the sword to be all that strong, as the runes would take care of a lot of that. It had to have the right sort of weight, but really he could handle that bit by Transfiguration if he needed to (though that would mean getting good at that aspect of Transfiguration) and it had to have enough space for the runic sequence he'd worked out.

After a lot of pieces of scrap parchment, he'd eventually decided on (and checked with Professor Babbling) the sequence of Pertho-Ansuz-Nauthiz-Teiwaz-Hagalaz-Ehwaz-Raido. That was a seven-rune sequence where it went Water-Air-Fire-Air-Ice-Earth-Air, and where the last pair was an Air-Earth pair, but that was actually okay because it was a weapon and the meanings of Ehwaz and Raido were about friendship and safe journeys.

The reversed pair meant that it would reverse the association as well, so that instead of being about safe journeys for friends it was about unsafe journeys for enemies (which was sort of appropriate for a sword), and the rest of the sequence had the runes for chance, luck, destiny, strength and the Halagaz rune which was associated with weapons.

Plus, it spelled out _Panther_, which was what had _really_ pleased Harry when he'd worked it out. It had a nice right feeling to it, and while he was a little bit worried about whether that would go exactly as he'd wanted it there were two variations he could use.

The first was to put the Ansuz rune on the end, which meant luck – and which was another Air rune, so it wasn't reversed. _Panthera_ was almost as good as _Panther_, after all, it was just Latin instead of English.

The other thing was that because Thurisaz was a Fire rune it could replace both Teiwaz and Halagaz in the sequence. Thurisaz meant strength to face an enemy, so it was a good meaning as well, and Harry actually liked the idea of including both spellings of _Panthera_ on the sword – whether by having the other runes bigger and stacking Thurisaz on top of Teiwaz and Halagaz, so you could read it either way, or by having the T-H scheme on one side and the TH one on the other side.

It all felt nice and elegant.

* * *

"Have you noticed that Professor Umbridge hasn't been pranked yet?" Dean said, that evening. "With the Twins around, I'm surprised – I'd have thought she'd have ended up croaking like a frog or something by now."

"Well, that's an excellent point!" Fred agreed. "Wouldn't you say, George?"

"I would say, Fred!" George agreed.

Harry briefly observed that it felt odd – almost _wrong_ – for Fred and George to be referring to one another by the correct names.

"But what we realized was that she's probably heard about us," George explained. "And possibly about the other set of twins… but that if she got pranked, she'd be able to point to it and say that that right there was proof."

"Probably blame it on Harry," Fred agreed. "Or something."

"So we had a meeting," George said. "We're pranking her by _not_ pranking her."

"That's practically Zen, that is," Ginny observed.

"It's only theoretically Zen, but otherwise you're correct, Perry," Fred nodded. "Our counterparts are fair game, as usual, and you might see the occasional trick being played on other people, but her class is going to go completely undisturbed."

"And possibly unattended," Lee Jordan piped up. "You've got to admit _that_ would be funny."

"So she's going to be wanting to get pranked," George went on. "And she's going to see other pranks happening. We might even prank _ourselves_ to remind her… but not a single trick will befall her."

"That's really evil," Ron said, admiringly. "Don't you think so, Hermione?"

"...officially, no," Hermione told them.

"It seems perfectly admirable to me," Harry shrugged. "Even officially, as a prefect. All they're doing is _not_ breaking the rules."

"I just had a sudden amazing realization," George said. "This must be how Percy feels _all the time."_

* * *

Harry went to the Defence Club after dinner that night, as well, and that was a completely different experience.

While the first one had been students _older_ than him, and he'd been going along as much to learn himself as to help with teaching the club, for this one it was students_ younger_ than him andhe already knew all of the spells the first, second and third years would be hoping to learn.

That didn't mean it wasn't sort of fun, though. Harry and the other upper-class-men who would be helping introduced themselves (Ginny was there, for example, as well as Tanisis, though Draco and Hermione were among the ones who were going to be helping with the Saturday session and weren't there tonight) and then Harry quickly went through what he thought were _sensible_ rules about when you could cast defensive spells.

It basically amounted to not casting them except during a club lesson or when there was a proper emergency going on, plus pointing out that just because a jinx or curse wasn't going to hurt someone _directly_ that didn't mean it was safe. Tanisis helped by mentioning how painful it could be if someone had the Leg Locker jinx put on them while they were running, and there was a sort of 'oooh...' from the assembled students.

Then Harry showed them how to cast a shower of red sparks, which was about the most basic spell in the book, and got everyone to try casting it while they were moving around quickly. That got everyone running and laughing, spraying sparks at one another (or _not_ spraying sparks at one another, if they couldn't cast the spell right) and Harry came in for quite a lot of bombardment himself.

"We'll be learning other spells in the rest of the year," Harry told them, then, once everyone had calmed down a bit. "But one of the things I think is a lot of fun about Defence is thinking of good ways to use the spells you already have. Like this one."

He pointed his wand up into the air, and cleared his throat. _"Hyacinthum Inflammare."_

A jet of bluebell flames came out, falling in a line which made a couple of people step quickly backwards, and then Harry scooped up some of the flames with his paw.

"It's only a bit warmer than someone's breath," he explained. "So it's not really dangerous at all. But it makes a good distraction, so you can use it without worrying much about where it's going."

Casting the countercharm, Harry smiled. "So who can think of another way to use a spell that's not supposed to be a defensive spell?"

Dennis Creevey was the first to put up his hand, and said that if you got behind a door and shut the far side with a door-locking spell then you'd be able to run away. That was a good idea, one Harry himself hadn't thought of, and Dennis looked very pleased when Harry said that.

A few others made suggestions, like using summoning charms or maybe Transfiguring a stone into a bird to fly at the person, before Isaac put up a wing for attention and showed something he'd drawn on his slate.

If Harry was understanding it correctly, he was suggesting flying up in the air and dropping things on people.

Harry had to admit that that would work, though it might be dangerous for the person doing the dropping as well, and Isaac sort of nodded at that like he understood the downside.

* * *

Amazingly, things at Hogwarts started to settle into a proper routine. Most of their lessons were the same as normal, if more focused on things for OWLs, and Harry found that he did still have enough time to go flying over to Fort William every week or two to get new books.

His two-weeks-on-one-week-off patrols were mostly quite similar to one another, and _Dragonsinger_ gradually disappeared into the finished book pile to be replaced by the sequel _Dragondrums_ and Piemur having to re-evaluate his life after his singing voice broke with puberty. (It was a concept that Empress found sort of fascinating, as it seemed snakes didn't have such a thing, though she said it explained a lot of what Heirs of Slytherin had done over the centuries.)

Ron and the rest of the Quidditch Team were training hard, and Harry and his friends often spent Saturday or Sunday watching as they flew formations and passed the Quaffle, hit the Bludger and Ginny got better and better at catching the Snitch.

The fact she was occasionally shifting into being a falcon was probably helping her spot it, at least, and Harry wondered if she'd try catching it during a game by shifting and stooping out of the sky like a thunderbolt.

Even the Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons weren't _too_ bad. Oh, they certainly just ended up reading the textbook in total silence, but Harry could at least use the time to jot down notes about what to do in Defence Club or just think about the passages he'd read in _Practical Defensive Magic_ over the previous lunch.

It wasn't what he'd prefer, but it was stable.

* * *

On Monday the Second of October, at breakfast, Harry was halfway through a _Quibbler_ article ('Secrets Of The Runic Arts – How The Sistine Chapel Is A Giant Rune Array', which seemed to hinge on the idea that the runes in question were buried invisibly underneath the paint) when Neville flapped the _Daily Prophet_.

"Harry, mate, you might want to read this," he suggested.

Harry duly took the _Prophet_, which was open to the letters page, and found what Neville was pointing him at.

It was a letter from 'Disgusted of Uxbridge', who Harry had last heard of in First Year. They said that it was a dreadful and possibly illegal shame that students at Hogwarts were being taught dangerous magic by unqualified Beasts, and that this sort of the thing was the sort of thing up with which people should not put.

Or, well, Harry was sort of simplifying it, because there was quite a lot of quite unpleasant phrasing.

"Cripes," Dean said, reading the letter as well. "Reminds me of what my mum says she read about black people."

Harry didn't like people like Disgusted of Uxbridge, but in a way he was sort of grateful that what he was doing wasn't something they'd like. It made him think he might be doing the right thing.

* * *

After another chilly Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, in which Harry mostly wrote down a few possible spells to discuss in the next Defence Club session, Harry was surprised to see Hedwig flying into the hall during dinner.

She placed a small note neatly by Harry's plate, examined the food available (today the theme was largely based around wraps) and snagged a piece of flavoured chicken before taking wing again.

Dean sniggered. "Hedwig Express, deliveries all hours."

"Pretty much," Harry agreed, unfolding the note to discover who it was from, and found it written in narrow, loopy handwriting.

_Since I believe I have your schedule correct, would you be so kind as to grace me with your company tonight? I have a matter which I would like to discuss._

_If I have not got your schedule correct and you are sadly unavailable tonight, please feel assured I will not feel offended. Simply send Ruth to me with a message and I will quite understand._

_\- A.P. .D._

_p.s. the password is Spangles._

Harry nodded, wondering what it was that Dumbledore wanted him for.

Just in case, he decided he should bring along the mirror that connected to Empress and one of the pictures that would let him switch to speaking Dragonish.

You probably _could_ be too prepared, but Harry didn't think it applied in this case.

* * *

Around seven in the evening, after doing his History and Potions homework, Harry left the Gryffindor Common Room to make his way to Dumbledore's office.

The password was a kind of sweet Harry had never heard of – not for the first time – but it worked, letting Harry through onto the spiral stairs which led up to the headmaster's suite.

The thought of a suite password also being a sweet password gave Harry a little smile, and then he was close enough to the top that he spoke up. "Good evening, Professor!"

"Ah, good evening, Harry," Dumbledore replied, standing up as Harry entered the office. "I trust the journey was no trouble?"

"No trouble at all, Professor," Harry assured him.

"All fine with your school work?" Dumbledore added. "I know the OWL year can be quite busy."

"I've been keeping up with my homework so far, Sir," Harry answered. "The Defence homework is the one that takes up the most time, because it's just copying out chapters of the textbook."

Dumbledore looked very interested. "Indeed? Well, I suppose it improves your penmanship, so there is some silver lining."

That was one of the things Harry liked about talking to Dumbledore. It seemed as though he was always very interested in whatever it was you had to say, no matter whether it was a simple idea he had to have heard before or something nuanced and relevant… but it never seemed like he was _forcing_ himself to be.

It was very pleasant to interact with.

"I am afraid we must get down to business, however," Dumbledore added. "In the Wizengamot I have tried having entire meetings go past without getting to the business section, but people do tend to complain."

He waved his wand, which made the lock on a nearby cabinet go _click_, and the doors swung open by themselves. A shallow stone basin emerged, floating slowly out under the effect of a Levitation or Hover Charm, and came to rest one one side of Dumbledore's desk.

"Do you know what this is, Harry?" he asked.

Harry had a look at the basin, trying to remember if anything he'd read about was similar.

It was a bit like he'd imagined the Mirror of Galadriel to be, though it currently didn't have any water in it. But that was The Lord Of The Rings, and there was something else…

"There's something that got mentioned in one of the detective books I've read, Professor," he answered. "It's for looking at memories, but I can't remember what it's called at the moment."

"Very good, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "This is called a Pensieve, and you are correct – it allows one to explore memories."

He took a small, silvery bottle from a shelf inside the cabinet, and held it up so Harry could see. "This, Harry, is what a memory looks like when it is outside a person. Despite what you may fear from the unfortunate matter of Mr. Lockhart it is quite harmless to extract a memory – it does not rob the donor of them."

His eyes twinkled a little. "Or at least, I don't remember losing any memories by doing this."

Harry snorted appreciatively, and Dumbledore smiled.

"What's that memory, then, Professor?" Harry asked, after a few seconds' pause.

"This, Harry, is a memory of Tom Riddle from someone I do not think you have met," Dumbledore explained. "That man is called Horace Slughorn, and he was the Potions Professor here and Head of Slytherin House before Severus took up the posts."

He spread his hands. "It seems that Potions and Slytherin Heads of House go together, though I do not think it is my hiring practices. Perhaps it is simply something about the Dungeons."

"So this Mr. Slughorn was Riddle's Head of House, then?" Harry asked. "And if you got a memory from him, he must still be around… sorry, Professor, it sometimes still surprises me how long wizards can live."

"The trick is to get a great deal of exercise," Dumbledore told him. "I think perhaps this is why Hogwarts has so very many floors. And you are quite correct – this particular memory concerns the one time I can discern that Tom asked about Horcruxes."

Dumbledore's expression became solemn. "Horace has always been a knowledgeable man, even about things which most would rather not know about, and while his curiosity was academic he was not ignorant of such things. I believe he thought Tom must have had the same curiosity, but – well, perhaps it would be simpler to make good use of the Pensieve I got out for us and show you directly."

He uncorked the little glass bottle, and poured it into the dish. Harry watched, fascinated, as the resultant liquid rippled slightly – then Dumbledore began to stir it with his wand, swirling it faster and faster, and there was a faint sort of image visible within.

"It seems quite hard to look into, Professor," he said.

"Ah, to truly use a Pensieve you must go all the way in," Dumbledore explained. "Once you make contact you are drawn in, though it is possible that in your case the tip of your snout will not suffice – in that case I would advise that you perhaps open your mouth slightly. If you would follow me?"

Dumbledore leaned in closer, until his nose touched the basin – then, all of a sudden, he was gone.

* * *

Harry was surprised by what had happened, but after thinking for a moment he wasn't sure _why_. Dumbledore had certainly warned him that after he made contact he would be drawn in, and vanishing suddenly was at least as good a way of being drawn in as just standing there staring.

"Well?" one of the portraits along the walls asked. "He's waiting, you know."

"Sorry," Harry replied, politely, and leaned in himself.

The tip of his muzzle touched the silvery memories, and there was a faint sort of cool feeling. He didn't seem to be getting pulled in, though, so Harry opened his muzzle slightly.

_That_ did it, and there was a kind of lurch. It felt a bit like travelling by Floo, only cold instead of warm, and the silvery surface of the memory seemed to fill all of Harry's peripheral vision until he found himself landing in front of a plump man with straw-coloured hair.

The man was sitting in an armchair, one hand grasping a small glass of wine and the other rummaging in a box, and then he froze.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said, from behind him. "I trust there were no problems using the Pensieve? I believe this is your first time."

"I don't remember using one before, Sir," Harry answered, which got him a chuckle from Dumbledore.

He looked around, seeing that they had arrived in an office – the layout didn't look familiar at all, and it had clearly been furnished by someone with an appreciation for what Harry had seen described as 'the finer things in life'.

Harry didn't really agree with the idea that there was one category for 'the finer things in life', because as far as he was concerned the finest things in life were books. And it seemed like 'the finer things in life' usually meant the more expensive things in life.

"This is Professor Slughorn, of course," Dumbledore explained, waving Harry towards the rotund man as if they were meeting him in person. "And these are some of the members of what he liked to call his Slug Club, young witches and wizards who he felt were going up in the world."

Harry hadn't noticed the schoolboys – frozen in time, like Professor Slughorn – but now he had he looked at them. They were all about the same age as Harry and his friends, or a bit older – Fifth- or Sixth-years, Harry thought – and then Harry recognized something.

An ornate gold-and-black ring.

"Sir," he said, flicking his tail to point at the boy sporting it on his finger. "That's Tom Riddle, isn't it?"

"It is indeed, Harry," Dumbledore confirmed. "As you have doubtless discerned, when one uses a Pensieve they can step into a memory and replay it. I have halted this particular one so that I may give you an introduction to how they work, but soon I will be letting it continue in its own time."

He smiled. "Do you have any questions?"

"You said witches and wizards, Professor," Harry said. "And these are all wizards. Is that right?"

"Well caught, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "That is correct. As it happens, your mother was one of those witches Slughorn saw as likely to go up in the world, and there were others; there were rather more wizards than witches, though, and rather more Slytherins than those of the other three Houses."

He looked between the schoolboys and Slughorn. "Sometimes it is noticing something like that which can reveal things about ourselves that we had not even considered. But I believe we should see what happens, now."

Dumbledore flicked his wand slightly, and the scene played out.

Harry could see straight away how it was that Riddle had been so respected as a student, and how so many people – including Empress – hadn't realized what sort of person he was. He talked easily with Professor Slughorn and the other boys laughed; then everything went foggy for a moment and Professor Slughorn announced dolefully, "You'll go wrong, boy, mark my words."

The fog cleared, which left Harry wondering what it had meant in the first place, and then the other boys left – leaving only Riddle in the room.

Riddle asked Slughorn about Horcruxes, and then the fog came again and Slughorn told Riddle in the same loud way that he knew nothing about Horcruxes and wouldn't tell if he did.

"Well, that was quite informative," Dumbledore said, into the fog. "Wouldn't you say so?"

Harry thought it was as clear as mud (or fog), but what Dumbledore said made him think about the whole thing again.

"He was asking about Horcruxes," he said, sort of thinking out loud. "And when he asked, it went sort of dark and foggy – for the second time."

"Very good, Harry, though I would slightly correct you and say that it went foggy when Slughorn _replied,_" Dumbledore said, and Harry nodded his understanding.

"But he was asking when he already had, um, two Horcruxes, I think," Harry added, trying to pull together what he'd been told about when Empress had been ordered to kill someone – and when Riddle's father and grandparents had been killed, as he'd discussed with Dumbledore before. "The first one was the diary, because that was when he was in fifth year – nineteen forty three – but the ring wasn't until nineteen forty four, and he made it into a Horcrux as soon as he got it."

"Well spotted, Harry!" Dumbledore congratulated him. "I must confess that that had eluded me. Well done indeed. Now, we should perhaps go back to my office, so we can discuss what to do next."

* * *

Getting out of the Pensieve turned out to be as easy as concentrating on it, and in a second or so they were both back in Dumbledore's office.

"As you may have guessed, the fog was not part of what originally happened in that meeting," Dumbledore told Harry. "I expect that if it had then someone would have mentioned it. No, what that means is that the memory has been tampered with."

He gave Harry a sad smile. "Alas, Slughorn is a man who likes to look good, including to himself, and it seems he has chosen to cast his memory of whatever discussion they once had in a better light. It may be that he has the true memory stored somewhere, but it would be quite difficult to persuade him to part with it."

"Would it help, Professor?" Harry asked. "We already know Tom Riddle had Horcruxes – I've destroyed four of them, and we know what a fifth one is."

"But the problem is to discover how _many_ of them he made," Dumbledore explained. "It would not do at all to miss one, and consider ourselves done… though, of course, it seems he spent several years between making one and making another, so perhaps it would not help after all."

He chuckled. "Remember that skill you just displayed, Harry. One of the best ways to get someone to agree with you is to persuade them to convince _themselves_, and it will serve you in good stead in your future years if you can do so. I also find it tends to produce fewer arguments."

Harry duly nodded his understanding, though he was also wondering.

Maybe if they looked at the places Riddle might have hidden his Horcruxes that would help? One of them had gone to his wizarding family home, another to a place of some significance from his childhood…

"He didn't leave one at the orphanage where he grew up, did he?" Harry asked.

"I checked over the summer," Dumbledore replied promptly. "Though I do not believe it was this summer just past… yes, it was the summer after your second year, I think. It is now an office building in which a company called Havelock Sanitation operates, though in hindsight I think Riddle would not have wanted to go back there even to hide a piece of his soul. Our wizarding world offered him grandeur, you see."

"What about the Ministry of Magic?" Harry checked. "Or Diagon Alley? Those and Hogwarts are the places I think of when I think of how wonderful magic is."

"What an excellent thought," Dumbledore announced. "As someone who grew up with magic, alas, such places are rather like going to the post office. I will have to have some thoughts of my own on the matter, and see whether they fit together."

* * *

The next day, Harry spent a lot of it reflecting on the schedule.

Tuesdays had already felt a bit odd because – like Fridays – he had four different lessons over the course of the day, but after the institution of the Defence Club it had got odder as there were now effectively _five_ different lessons.

On the other hand, Harry _was_ still able to largely keep on top of the homework, so that was okay. It did sort of hurt that he'd had to give up on Dungeons and Dragons club, but everyone in the group had been understanding about it and Harry hoped that they'd be able to run a few sessions over the holidays or after exams.

Or even after leaving Hogwarts. There was no reason you had to stop doing that sort of thing just because you'd graduated… and you were more likely to have evenings and weekends off, probably.

* * *

"Any idea what sort of questions they ask for the Muggle Studies OWL?" Neville asked, glancing through his notes. "I hope it's not all technical questions about how to wire a plug and stuff like that."

"That one's not _too_ bad, it's all colour coded," Dean shrugged. "But dunno."

"On past papers it's usually some questions about technical aspects of Muggle life – meaning stuff like how Muggles get around, or, yes, wiring plugs," Hermione supplied. "Then there's some about social stuff, like the rules of football or cricket."

"Now I wonder if there's an extra credit question about the offside rule," Dean snorted.

"I wonder whether they ask about television," Harry mused. "Or maybe that's hard to write questions for because it changes every year."

"I think if they _did_ ask questions about television it would have to be television programs that were around back when the textbooks were written," Hermione guessed.

"Oh, yeah, like Blue Peter," Ron said.

"No, that one's still going," Dean informed him. "Unless it's ended in the last couple of months. My sisters love it."

"What, really?" Ron asked.

He got the Muggle Studies textbook out. "What about, um… The Sky At Night?"

"Still going," Harry supplied.

"Doctor Who?" Ron checked. "No, wait, I think someone mentioned that one before?"

"I _wish_ that one were still going," Hermione sighed. "I watched some of the last episodes they showed on television."

"Muggle television shows go on for a long time, don't they?" Neville mused.

"I think it's that either they last a really short time or they keep going for a _really_ long time," Harry said.

Talking about Muggle Studies had reminded him about the other subject he didn't do, though, and he waited a moment to see if the conversation would keep going before asking about it. "How's Divination?"

"Professor keeps warning me I'm going to die," Dean summarized. "I mean, she's not wrong, everyone does eventually. She just seems to really focus on me."

"If she really can tell the future, she's not very good at it," Hermione sniffed.

"Still, the Divination teacher being able to _do_ telling the future isn't really required, right?" Ron asked. "I know that our Charms teacher is really good at Charms, and our Potions teacher is really good at Potions, but our History teacher just has to _know_ a lot about History. He doesn't have to actually be able to go back in time."

"He does have to be from the past," Harry pointed out.

"Yeah, but everyone's from the past," Ron countered.

"Behold!" Neville announced suddenly. "I've travelled here from the year nineteen-eighty!"

He paused. "You know. The slow way."

"In that case, I've come here from the year nineteen seventy-nine," Hermione announced.

"What's it like there?" Harry asked.

"I don't remember many of the details, it was a while ago," she told him.

Ron started sniggering, and that set them all off.

* * *

In the Oddly Shaped Support Meeting Or Whatever It Was Called Now (as Harry privately referred to it, largely for amusement value) this year, a lot of the discussion since the beginning of the term had been about Professor Umbridge.

Nobody really thought very much of her, and Harry could sort of tell that the only thing keeping Tyler and Anne from really going to town on her with pranks and jokes was how much it had to be irritating her that she couldn't complain about any disruption in her lessons. A letter _had_ appeared in the Daily Prophet a few days after the first appearance of _Disgusted_, which had apparently been penned by _Fake Name Of Unrelated Place Name_, and which said that the defence teaching at Hogwarts was actually quite satisfactory despite the lack of qualifications possessed by the Professor (for which they cited _Disgusted_).

Harry thought there was a fairly good chance that the Twins (either set) had written it, but he wasn't going to mention it (because, after all, Prefects were meant to make sure people didn't break school rules and writing a letter didn't break them.)

The problem with it, as Harry realized about halfway through that week's Meeting Or Whatever, was that it meant that other problems could get ignored.

"Melody?" he asked. "Sorry to interrupt."

The vampire looked slightly worried. "Is something wrong?"

"I hope not," Harry replied. "I was just wanting to make sure you were getting on okay in your flying lessons."

Now Melody just looked blank. "Is there a reason I wouldn't be? Is that because I don't have wings?"

She waved at Matthew. "Because he doesn't have wings either, and-"

"It's not that," Harry interrupted.

He waved vaguely upwards. "It's because it's one of the lessons that has to be outdoors, in the sun."

"Right," Melody said, sounding relieved to know what was going on.

Counting off on her fingers, the Gryffindor first-year went through a list with a sort of sing-song tone – like she'd said it all before enough times to have it memorized. "I wear long robes. I've got gloves. I wear a big floppy hat. I make sure I don't fly upwards at too steep an angle when the sun isn't behind clouds. And I've got some emergency darkness powder from Peru just in case."

"That's great!" Harry told her. "I wanted to make sure you were getting on with it all right, that's all."

Melody shrugged. "I knew what I was getting into when I came here."

Put like that, Harry could definitely see why she'd ended up in Gryffindor.

He was a bit less clear on why Isaac had ended up in Slytherin, but it would be rude to ask.

* * *

AN:

A lot of the inevitable exploding happened in Mr. Weasley's shed.


	74. Dragons Not Being Scary

Harry still wasn't fully keeping up with the news, but Neville was, and he told Harry about some of the things which showed up in the _Daily Prophet_ when he thought Harry might be interested – and, in turn, Harry shared anything that seemed to be worth sharing when it showed up in the Quibbler.

Since Neville was quite good at telling when Harry might be interested, it seemed like a good system to Harry. That meant that he knew about it when a writer signing themselves as 'Dogged of Dogwarts' pointed out that, really, the Defence Against the Dark Arts education system at Hogwarts had been an inconsistent mess for a long time now and for someone to be complaining about it being done in an unusual way this particular year was itself a little bit unusual.

Sirius had a fairly good point, Harry thought, but he was aware he might be a little bit biased.

* * *

In the Defence Club that Tuesday, which mostly involved fourth and fifth years, Harry was the one who started the explanation.

"We're going to be doing the Disarming Charm today," he said. "Who knows how to cast that one?"

Lots of hands or wands went up, about two thirds of the students attending. A few were a bit more hesitant, and Harry nodded.

"It's not a very hard spell, which is good," he said. "The incantation is _Expelliarmus_, and it has a red jet that moves quite fast. One of the reasons we're going to be practicing with it is that it's a nice safe spell – it can knock you backwards a bit, but unlike a Stunning Charm you can be hit by lots of them and it doesn't get dangerous."

Ginny had her hand up, and Harry was about to see what her question was but Draco beat him to it. "Weasley."

"You might need to be more specific," Ron said.

Ginny made a rude gesture at him, then went back to her question. "Is that because it's safer to practice hitting targets with a charm like that?"

"Of course," Draco drawled. "Being hit by three Disarming Charms at once would be annoying, but being hit by even one blasting curse would be _far_ worse."

"So first we're going to have everyone casting the spell at the wall, to make sure they have the words and the wand movement right. Then everyone's going to pair off, and make sure they can properly _disarm_ someone..."

* * *

A few people did need correction – Colin had to go over the spell three times before he was finally able to cast a jet of light that was red instead of a funny sort of yellow colour, and Draco observed that if he cast a spell like _that_ in a proper duel then it was a coin flip whether their opponent ended up with smelly armpits or a missing finger – but once that was over Harry made sure everyone was pairing off.

"Check with whoever you're paired up with to see who's younger," he told them. "The person who's younger is going to be disarming first. On three… one, two-"

The door opened.

Harry said 'three', and more than a dozen people said 'Expelliarmus!' all at once. Red spells went flashing out, several wands went flying, and only a couple of people caught them.

Everyone else was looking at the door.

There was a slightly startled looking man standing there who Harry vaguely remembered from a few years ago, and a few more crowded behind him.

"Mr. Pucey," Draco said, with a relaxed smile. "Quite a surprise."

_That_ was where Harry remembered the man from – he was one of the board of governors.

"Draco?" asked Mr. Malfoy, from behind Mr. Pucey. "Don't stand in the door, Grosvenor."

Mr. Pucey stepped inside, followed by Mr. Malfoy, several more of the members of the school board, Professor Umbridge, and Professor Dumbledore smiling his kind smile at the rear.

"There's quite a lot of them here, I must say!" said a witch who Harry sort of remembered was called Amritt. "Is this all of the ones in your club?"

"We had to split into groups to make it easier," Harry said. "There's two days each for first to third years, fourth and fifth years, and sixth and seventh years."

"My goodness, that must be most of the school," an older gentleman said.

"That's not the point," Mr. Pucey said. "The _point_ is that this is dangerous and unsupervised!"

"Dear me, Grosvenor," Dumbledore opined, sounding faintly befuddled. "You must have excellent eyesight, because all I see is a room full of young wizards along with several Prefects. Please, elaborate."

"Well, Headmaster," Professor Umbridge began – to Harry's surprise, she was using the same I-think-you're-five tone she used in class – but this time she was talking to someone who had to be several decades older than her. "Until I came in, there were no teachers in the room, and until we all came in there were no _adults_ in the room. So that's unsupervised, wouldn't you agree?"

Dumbledore put a finger to his chin. "Do you know, I don't believe there's any rule requiring _adult_ supervision for any clubs or societies. Or indeed prefects."

He cast around, then his gaze lighted on Zacharias Smith. "Do tell me, what kind of supervision do you have during Quidditch practice? I believe you take part?"

"Well, we don't really have anyone," Zacharias said. "Unless you mean that Cedric is always there?"

"Of course, Dumbledore, you must realize that that argument doesn't make a great deal of sense," Mr. Malfoy observed.

"Yes, of course," Professor Umbridge agreed.

"It makes perfect sense to me," Draco said. "It's not as if we're doing anything dangerous. I'm more likely to get hurt doing Quidditch."

Harry noticed that Ron had turned away from the school board members and looked like he was trying to adjust for some kind of seismic shift in his world view.

"Very amusing, of course, but you must surely be joking," Mr. Pucey said. "Casting spells like this, especially with a _dragon_ in charge! Preposterously dangerous!"

Harry was about to reply, but Draco cleared his throat.

"Mr. Pucey?" he said. "It's actually Potter who suggested we should be practicing using spells on one another mostly using Disarming Charms and other safe spells."

"This is all very amusing," Professor Umbridge said, though she didn't sound like it. "But what matters is that this is an unsafe and unauthorized school club."

"I quite agree that Mr. Potter's species doesn't matter," Amritt volunteered. "But I don't think this club is unsafe and I certainly don't think it's unauthorized."

"Of course it is," Professor Umbridge replied. "I haven't authorized it!"

"I think you will find, Dolores, that I _have_," Dumbledore informed her. "While I am aware that as the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher you can set your own curriculum, you will also find that there is no school rule – nor has there ever been – forbidding students from learning material more advanced than what they happen to be covering in class that year."

He smiled. "Perhaps we should leave Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Potter to run their club by themselves, and go upstairs to have something to drink? I believe I may still have some of a lovely type of tea called Earl Grey, which I believe was invented by a Muggle lord."

* * *

The rest of the Defence Club carried on without interruption, or mostly without interruption anyway. Luna turned out to be quite good at the Disarming Charm, though when she cast it on Tracy at one point instead of getting Tracy's wand she got her shoes.

"I don't think that's how the spell is supposed to work," Tracy said. "Is it?"

She looked around, seeing Harry (who'd been watching). "Was that one of those times where someone makes a _mistake_, or one of the times when someone does something weird and insightful?"

"That depends on whether you're trying to do what you do, I think," Harry judged. "Or sometimes it doesn't, but it depends on whether the thing you're trying to do is useful?"

"It seems simple to me," Luna said pleasantly. "It's a disarming charm, so it means you get whatever it is the other person has which is a weapon. And Daddy told me that a Muggle leader banged his shoe on a table once, so it sounds like a weapon to me."

Harry wasn't sure what Luna meant by that, but he wasn't willing to bet it hadn't happened.

"Does that work on anything?" Daphne asked. "That could be helpful. I've got a little sister."

"Do sisters take things of yours?" Luna said. "That sounds very impolite. Though I imagine using magic on them wouldn't help much either."

She pondered, then raised her wand. "Do you mind if I try something?"

"Go ahead, you can try it on Daphne," Tracy said.

"Why can't she try it on Harry?" Daphne asked.

"Because when it doesn't work I won't know if it doesn't work or if it would work if it wasn't for using it on a dragon, of course," Luna said. "I could try it on Tracy if you want."

"I don't like the sound of that plan," Tracy said.

She glanced around, then snagged Colin. "Why don't you try it on the Gryffindor?"

"Hey!" Colin protested.

"That doesn't sound very Gryffindor," Tracy told him. "Gryffindors are good for anything, right?"

"Well… we're supposed to be," Colin admitted. "But..."

"There you go, then," Tracy said. "You can try it on the Gryffindor."

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Harry assured Colin.

The Muggle-born boy looked a bit torn, then swallowed and nodded slightly.

"Good," Luna told him, then rummaged in her pocket and pulled out something that looked vaguely familiar to Harry.

"What's that?" he asked, just ahead of Daphne who was about to say the same thing.

"It's a dream catcher," Luna told them. "I thought I'd see if it caught daydreams, but it doesn't seem to be very good. I've had it in there since September and there isn't a single daydream caught in it. Hold this, please."

Colin took it, looking just confused now.

Luna pointed her wand at him. _"Expelliarmus!"_

The red jet of light hit Colin, and his tie flew off.

"Were you trying to disarm him of the dream catcher?" Tracy asked. "Or do you just want to gradually undress everyone in the room?"

Daphne's ears went slightly pink.

"Because if you do then I know someone you could cast it at next," Tracy went on.

"Oh, no, that was just the first part of the test," Luna explained. _"Expelliarmus!"_

This time the dream catcher went flying, and Luna caught it.

"I thought so," Luna said, satisfied. "It's all about what you think of as a weapon."

Harry tried, next, giving the dream catcher back to Colin and then trying to disarm him of it. It didn't work, though, and that left everyone looking puzzled.

Except Luna, that was. "It's not enough to want to take it, Harry. You have to think of it as a _weapon_."

She pointed at the dream catcher. "The second time, I was really quite sure that that was an affront to my liberty to dream about whatever it was I wanted."

Harry wasn't sure if he could _be_ that sure about something. Perhaps it depended on the context, though.

* * *

"What an evening," Ron sighed, once the Club was over and they were back in the common room.

"Why's that?" Dean asked. "Did something unusual happen?"

"You could say that," Ron replied. "Professor Umbrage came into our club to complain, with what seemed like half the board of governors – including Malfoy's dad."

"You mean _Draco's_ dad, Ron," Hermione corrected. "They're both Malfoys. Unless you meant that Draco's grandfather was there and I didn't see him."

"I mean Draco's dad, then," Ron said. "He calls me Weasley even though there's way more of us than there are Malfoys. Even when me and Ginny and Fred and George are all in the same room."

"That's probably because he sees you as interchangeable, or something," Dean suggested. "Anyway, Mr. Malfoy was there?"

"Yeah, and it was weird," Ron said. "Someone said that it was dangerous, and then Malf – um, then _Draco_ said that it was safer than Quidditch. It was really weird, and then Draco said that Harry was the one who'd made it safer because he was the one having them cast less dangerous spells instead of more dangerous ones."

He shook his head slowly. "I'm just… really not used to Draco being helpful."

"Maybe it's teenage rebellion?" Neville suggested. "His dad's a first-class git, but maybe that means he's being _not_ a git?"

"Or maybe it's a Slytherin thing," Hermione said. "You know, he's doing something which benefits him, it just happens to benefit you as well."

"Oh, thank _Merlin_," Ron sighed. "I was beginning to think that the castle was going to turn upside down next."

He paused. "...though, now I think about it, the Twins aren't pranking a teacher they deeply dislike, I've done more teaching than the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor this year and there's a griffin in Slytherin. So maybe it already has."

"I think we'd have noticed by now," Neville said, then promptly went flying towards the ceiling. He shifted into Lapcat on the way up, twisting to land on his feet next to the chandelier with a hollow _thump_, and levelled a flat feline glare at Fred Weasley.

"Sorry," Fred said, his wand half-out. "Couldn't resist."

"I'm not going to take points off," Harry said, getting his own wand out. "But I am going to tell you to catch him when I end that spell."

* * *

Draco told Harry a few days later that he'd sent a letter to Mr. Pucey – the one who'd been the most annoyed out of the school board – asking what spells the man had learned in his Fifth Year for OWLs.

He seemed quite proud of it, and Harry agreed that it was a good idea to ask someone what spells they'd learned in fifth year. It took him a moment longer to realize something else, and then he said that it was _also_ a good idea to ask Mr. Pucey because he'd been annoyed about the idea of learning dangerous spells. So it meant that Mr. Pucey couldn't complain about them learning _those_ spells.

"Not bad, Potter," Draco said, after that. "You might learn something if you keep it up for long enough."

Harry's guess was that that was probably about politics or something.

* * *

As the term wore on, Halloween got closer. People seemed to relax a little, which meant that Harry had to stop a few groups trying to sneak things into the castle (for some reason dungbombs were popular) and the Quidditch teams were more and more focused on the upcoming matches that would start in the very early days of November.

The first birthday of Ollie, Sally and Gary came around, as well, and a gratifying number of students from all four houses and all seven years turned up to attend a birthday party celebration that Hagrid had put together. The presents were mostly practical things (meaning things that were edible by normal-dragon standards, usually, or tools to help Hagrid and Nora keep them clean such as a wire brush) or things like Muggle children's toys or dog toys but made much, much larger and more durable.

Ollie in particular liked a length of knotted ship's hawser with a knot tied in it, which he worried at for about an hour before managing to unpick the knot.

He then looked a bit disappointed, and went to Hagrid to get the knot tied again. This time it lasted about half an hour, and the third time it was about ten minutes.

Because Harry had watched one of those nice television documentaries by David Attenborough during the summer holiday, he decided that that was the sort of thing that Charlie would like to know about. Especially when Ollie watched very closely when Hagrid patiently tied the knot again, and then picked it apart before tying it back together himself.

Sally and Gary, by contrast, spent the whole of that time playing catch.

* * *

"Harry!" Fred said, on the morning of Halloween.

"Harry!" George reiterated, or agreed, or possibly said. "What would you think if – just for the duration of the feast – Professor Umbridge _just happened_ to croak every time she opened her mouth?"

"We worked out how we could do it," Fred told him. "We call them Tongue Toad Treats."

"One of the many products we've designed and are planning on selling in the joke shop," George agreed. "Once the joke shop exists."

"It doesn't, yet," Fred confirmed. "We're still working on development."

"It'd be against the rules," Harry said, and wasn't sure whether or not to feel guilty about how that seemed like something to regret. "And I thought you said you weren't going to give her anything she could use?"

"Oh, we're not going to _do_ it," George said.

He pulled into his pocket and got out a roll of parchment. "We're calling this the Coulda list. Every time we come up with something new we _could_ have done to prank our Defence Professor, well..."

"On it goes," Fred agreed. "And by the way, we think she's a Professor because she _professes_ to be a teacher."

"Makes you wonder where the word came from, doesn't it?" George mused.

Harry was more curious about something else. "Don't you think that's sort of unfair? Because you have to get the spell to actually affect her, and she's probably not going to be fooled the same way twice."

"Worked that out too," Fred reported. "For the Tongue Toad Treats, they still work when they're powderized."

"You mean you can make dried frog pills?" Harry asked, ears perking up.

"By Jove, I didn't think of that," Fred admitted. "That's from those Disc world books, isn't it?"

"Yeah," George agreed. "They're what they give the Bursar. He's usually crazy, but with the pills he's… well, a bit like Dumbledore. So still a bit crazy, but good at maths."

Harry was fairly sure that that meant George had read the relevant books. Or at least, that he'd read them more recently.

"Anyway, she's got a supply of tea," Fred went on. "And the best way to get someone to have a potion in their tea is?"

Harry frowned, thinking about that.

It seemed like saying the tea was the thing you should put the powder in was the obvious answer, and because of that Harry didn't think that _was_ the answer that either Fred or George were looking for.

"The milk?" he guessed.

"Not bad, but you're forgetting what sort of person she is," Fred told him. "The best way to get someone to have a potion in their tea is to make them think it's in something else, like the cordial."

"George, that was the right answer," George said.

"Well, yes, but he _is_ a prefect," Fred countered.

"But how could you be sure she'd have tea that day?" Harry checked. "She might have something else, especially on halloween."

"Hmm, good point," Fred admitted. "We might need to go back to the drawing board on that one."

"At least we agreed with the Smiths that sneaking in in animal forms didn't count any more," George said.

Harry must have looked quizzical, because George elaborated. "It's not just us doing this. Taira and Anna are as well – we swap lists once a week. They had a really clever one last week about making her chair rise up an inch every time she went _hem hem_."

"Stroke of genius," Fred agreed.

"Utterly impeccable," George said.

"_We_ were saving it for Christmas," Fred concluded. "Shame, really."

George snapped his fingers. "What about giving her classroom an echo effect, so anything she says just keeps bouncing around the room for minutes on end?"

"I see where you're coming from, Fred," Fred agreed. "Let's see if we can work this one out."

"Should be done by lunchtime," George guessed.

* * *

Halloween, as always, meant a lot of decorations went up around the school. There was a generally spooky theme, like bats flying through the halls and cobwebs arranged artfully in the Entrance Hall (Harry had heard that an acromantula team from the Forbidden Forest had done it, and since he'd heard it from Hagrid that meant it was probably true).

He'd had a reason to give it some thought, though, when one of the first-years pointed out that for Muggles a lot of the things that were considered spooky were things that witches and wizards had all year around anyway – or knew were false, in the case of things like witches all having green faces.

Harry didn't know where that one could have even got started.

The highlight of the day, though, was the Halloween Feast. It was important enough that the usual Defence Club got skipped for the day by mutual agreement, and the House-Elves went to special pains to make sure that everyone had something they really loved.

For Melody, for example, there was something which Hermione said was called sanquette and which the young vampire dug into with gusto, explaining that it was one of those foods like black pudding which was made with a lot of blood as an ingredient. Then Dean took about half of the nearest tray of stuffing, added plenty of bread sauce, and Neville said something about bubble-head charms being needed tonight.

Harry had one of the dishes with a little dragon flag on, as he did about every second or third dinner. This one was sort of like a lasagna except that the flat sheets of pasta had been replaced by sheets of thin, splintery rock. It was a bit like a much softer version of slate, except that the sheets were quite transparent when there was a light on the other side.

"Sometimes I think they're experimenting on you, mate," Ron said, cutting into the deep crust of a chicken pie.

"They're usually pretty tasty results," Harry replied with a shrug of his wings.

He licked around inside his mouth a bit, frowning. "There's all little splintery bits now, though, I might have to rinse my mouth out to get them."

"Sounds like what everyone else normally has to deal with," Ginny shrugged.

The main course then gave way to dessert, and taking pride of place on the table near Harry was a giant bat-shaped cake.

"Who wants a wing?" Fred asked, picking up a knife, and cut the first slice.

Inside, and unusually, it turned out that it was layered vertically instead of horizontally. There was no buttercream, either, with the place of the buttercream being taken by liquid caramel and melted chocolate that stayed perfectly stood up along with the brownie and sponge layers instead of flooding out onto the plate.

"Well, I don't know how they did it, but it looks tasty," Neville summarized, taking a slice and digging into it with a spoon. The chocolate rippled a bit like jelly, then Neville put it in his mouth, and he closed his eyes for a few seconds with a pleased smile.

"That chocolate's lemon flavoured," he explained.

"Lemon, right," George said. "You're sure?"

"Pretty sure," Neville replied, but took another spoonful. Everyone was watching him now, and this time he blinked in surprise.

"...how did they do that? That's apple."

"We thought we'd lend our talents to the dessert selection," George explained. "It's a bit like those pipe bombs, but not."

Ron eyed his own slice with faint suspicion. "What's the caramel, then?"

"Just caramel, they can't all be tricks," Fred told him.

Apparently willing to take that on trust, or at least take a gamble on it, Ron took a spoonful.

"...it's nice," he concluded.

"Well, our dear brother would know if food is nice," Fred said.

"Is that because he has good taste, or just from sheer experience?" Ginny checked.

Ron held up his index finger, swallowed, and said "Oi!"

* * *

As a general rule, unless it was fourth year (at least, as far as Harry was concerned, though that might be different for other students), Halloween brought the beginning of the Quidditch season. The first match was Slytherin versus Gryffindor, and four out of the seven players on the starting lineup of the Gryffindor team were Animagi with the surname 'Weasley'.

And all of them were nervous.

"What if the game goes on for hours?" Ron asked. "I haven't played a long game before."

"You've done long training sessions, though," Dean told him.

"One of them was just last Saturday," Neville agreed.

"Right, but staying focused for hours is different," Ron said.

"We can wake you up with a Bludger if you have trouble," Fred suggested. "I'm more worried about the new Slytherin Beaters."

"What, Malf-" Ron began, looked at Hermione (who was smiling tolerantly at him), and corrected himself. "Draco's friends, um, Crabbe and Goyle?"

"Vincent and Gregory," Harry supplied, in case Ron had forgotten their first names.

"Them, right," Ron agreed. "Why them?"

"They might not be the most academically gifted students, but that doesn't matter much for Beaters," George said.

"It might even help, given how well you two do," Ginny said.

She sighed. "But, well-"

"Ginny, you did pretty well in your first year on the team, and that was before you became an Animagus of a bird especially known for diving out of the sky at high speed to catch things," Harry interrupted.

He switched to looking at the others. "And Ron, you'll do fine. So long as you don't beat yourself up over a little mistake, you won't make any big ones."

After a few seconds of pause, George raised his hand. "What about us, coach?"

"You've been doing this since before I knew magic existed," Harry reminded them. "And the team won in your first year on it."

"He's got a point," Fred said.

"All right, you lot, come on," Katie said, standing up a few tables away. "We'd better get down and get ready."

* * *

At five minutes to two that afternoon, everyone was either in their seats or just shuffling along to find one next to their friends. Harry had arrived a bit earlier than most and secured a stand, one which was now occupied by plenty of people, and Neville was just taking his own spot when there was an extremely loud but diffident cough.

"Excuse me?" Professor Dumbledore asked, his magically amplified voice interrupting dozens of conversations all around the pitch. "I was wondering if, before this Quidditch match, I might say a few words on behalf of Professor Flitwick."

He paused. "Well, just one word, actually. You see, Professor Flitwick tells me that he's heard about some of the things they do in America before sports games, and while it is a Muggle idea I think it might be quite enjoyable for us to do a version. So the word is – _flypast."_

The word was still echoing when Nora came into view.

She was in front, wings held out and rippling slightly as the air flowed over them, and the three yearling dragons followed her in a kind of triangular formation. They were a bit lower, as well, and while Nora passed perhaps fifty feet over the highest parts of the stadium both flanking dragons – Ollie and Gary – were only about ten feet from hitting something.

As they passed over the stadium itself, all three of the youngsters spat out simultaneous jets of flame. Ollie's flame was red-fringed-with-gold over the Gryffindor end, Gary's was green-and-silver over the Slytherin end, and a magically unaltered blue jet from Sally completed the spectacle.

Cheering swept the stands along with a burst of spontaneous applause, and Professor Dumbledore said a very hearty thank you to all four of them.

"That was dragonish?" Hermione asked.

"Probably," Harry replied. "I understood it, anyway."

"And allow me also to thank Professor Snape for the potions which gave us those wonderful pyrotechnics," Dumbledore added. "Perhaps we shall have to make it a tradition, by doing it next week as well. But now, as I'm sure you've all been waiting for it – the game itself, please."

* * *

Harry knew it had been more than a year since the last proper Quidditch game – there'd only been training and pick-up games – but you wouldn't have been able to tell it from the play that was on display. The Slytherin Quidditch team immediately got possession of the ball and started passing it around, but then they were intercepted when a pass from Adrian to Cassius intersected with a Bludger and the Quaffle went rocketing off into the air.

Alicia took possession just ahead of the third Slytherin Chaser, Graham, but then had to almost stop in the air to avoid being hit by the other Bludger (launched by Vincent) and throw it below her in the vague direction of Katie in case Graham got a hold of it. Ginny went zipping past at high speed, getting in the way of Adrian catching the Quaffle, and then Katie managed to snag the ball and do a roll to avoid Cassius tackling her.

Angelina flew down to escort Katie, then dropped back and to the side to give Katie options on getting past the Keeper – Miles – and when the three Slytherin Chasers formed up in a blocking position to stop Katie entering the goal area Katie just threw it straight up in the air for Angelina to take and fly home to score.

Harry was keeping track so far, but then the next play started it all over again in a different variation. One minute a ferocious Bludger duel was taking place between Fred, George, Vincent and Gregory that ended with Katie dodging them both, the next Adrian was taking a shot on goal that Ron blocked with the brushes of his Nimbus 2001 – either because there was nothing else he could get in the way in time, or because doing something with a brush tail was just a squirrel thing to do.

Ginny climbed so high she was nearly a speck then came stooping down after a prospective Snitch – one which was in a completely different place to the real Snitch, but it got a Bludger sent her way to distract her and distracted everyone _else_ on the Slytherin team long enough to let Gryffindor score a goal. Not to be outdone, Draco zipped up and intercepted a Quaffle pass with the tip of his broomstick, though that provoked a five minute rule discussion in which it was concluded that it was 'not a penalty, but don't do it again because it's hard enough to keep track normally'.

The scores crept higher a bit at a time. Gryffindor scored the first two goals, but then Slytherin started to score as well, and while Gryffindor was able to keep up a lead that wavered back and forth around three goals they were never really at the point of breaking away. Slytherin's Keeper was being consistent, missing or saving about the same rate of balls for the whole match so far, but Ron kept having stretches of brilliance where he got every single Quaffle mixed in with runs where two or three went through in a row.

To his credit, though, he seemed to be taking what Harry said about not beating himself up to heart, and he always did rally.

* * *

After a bit more than an hour, the scores had risen to the point that Gryffindor had a fifty-point lead – though that wasn't a very large advantage, in a way, because Slytherin had two hundred and twenty points to the Gryffindor two hundred and seventy.

It had started raining, a light drizzle instead of a big dramatic thunderstorm, and Harry's wings were spread to provide umbrellas – his friends all had Warming Charms on, but being rained on could still be quite unpleasant – while Dean had doused himself in bluebell flames to make certain he was properly heated.

"Isn't there a charm to stop yourself getting wet?" Neville asked. "There has to be, surely."

Hermione frowned, thinking about it. "I think most wizards use umbrellas. There is the impervious charm?"

"Already got that on my robes," Neville said. "That stops my robes getting wet, but it doesn't help _me_ much."

He paused. "Well, it helps a bit."

"What about the Bubble-Head Charm?" Harry suggested. "That stops your head getting wet when it's entirely immersed in water."

Taking a breath, he cast it, and smiled as the bubble of clear air developed around him. "There we go."

"Are you telling me nobody's ever tried that before?" Dean asked.

"It probably just didn't make it into the textbooks," Hermione guessed, casting the charm on herself.

Everyone else looked at her. There was a cheer as Gryffindor scored, but after having to cheer about two dozen times in the last hour the cheer was getting slightly desultory.

"What?" she asked.

"Are you sure you're feeling well?" Tanisis checked.

Hermione huffed. "Honestly. If someone discovers a new use for a spell and doesn't share it, it doesn't end up getting written about. People can only write about what they _know_."

"Look!" June called, drawing their attention to the game.

Ginny was diving out of the sky again, and this time she wasn't going anywhere near the Quaffle. Draco leaned over his broom and accelerated as well, looking briefly up and down along the line Ginny was taking, then dropped into a dive that gradually got steeper. He was lower down, closer to the pitch, and that meant that wherever Ginny was going Draco was going to get there first.

"He doesn't-" Harry began, realizing that if Draco had _seen_ the Snitch he'd be aiming straight for it instead of flying like that, and before he finished the words Ginny jumped off her broom.

Between one heartbeat and the next she blurred into the form of Perry, wings half-bent to give her the maximum manoeuvrability at her high speed, and swerved out of her dive in a half-corkscrew that took her _far_ away from the path she'd been taking and that Draco had been following.

Her talons flashed, and she caught the Golden Snitch by the base of both wings.

Then her broom hit the ground with a _whud_, trembling back and forth like a dart, which made everyone realize what they'd just seen and start cheering.

"That is _such_ a Gryffindor way to catch the Snitch," Tanisis snorted.

"Yes," Luna agreed. "Tricking your opponent into going in the wrong direction _is_ very Gryffindor."

"...all right, you don't have to be that sarcastic," the sphinx grumbled.

* * *

Cedric sought out Harry in Defence Club a couple of days later, and told him that he'd been keeping in touch with both Fleur and Krum (from last year's Triwizard Tournament) by owl.

That sounded like a nice thing to Harry, and when he said that Cedric gave him an easy smile.

"We thought it was good," he replied, then rummaged in one of his pockets.

"The weird thing is, though, Fleur sent me these yesterday."

It turned out that 'these' were photographs. Lots and lots of photographs, in an envelope that had clearly had something magical done to it to make them fit, and they all seemed to be the sort of photo that you took by accident while picking up your camera.

Photographs of ceilings, without anything interesting on the ceilings. Wardrobes with clothes in, mostly the powder-blue robes that Beauxbatons tended to use as uniforms. Cupboards, containing the normal sorts of things Harry would expect in a cupboard.

"She said you'd understand," Cedric added, and Harry frowned for a moment before brightening.

"Oh, right, these are photos of where there aren't any dragons," he explained.

Cedric didn't seem to get it, so Harry elaborated. "There's this book where there's lots of dragons hiding at Beauxbatons, but nobody ever notices them because they're a little bit good at hiding and all the wizards – everyone, even visitors – are really, really bad at finding them out. It's hilarious."

He looked down at the photos, flicking from one to another, then frowned. "The problem is, this doesn't really prove anything."

"It doesn't?" Cedric asked, though he sounded amused rather than puzzled now.

"Well, it proves that sometimes wizards look up," Harry corrected himself. "Or witches. But just because there are photos of places where dragons _aren't_ doesn't show that there aren't any dragons there at other times. It could have been a dragon who took the photos."

"And the whole book is like that?" Cedric asked, and got a nod. "I'll have to check it out."

He clapped his hands sharply, raising his voice and turning away from Harry a bit. "Okay! What I think we should do for the rest of today's club is work on some simple point casting. If some of you don't know, that's casting a spell without waving your wand – it's a bit harder but you still have the words to focus it. A lot of people end up doing it anyway because, well, they forget to wave the wand when casting a spell normally..."

* * *

On the last day of that week, or the second to last day of that week (it was Saturday, and Harry was never sure what Sunday counted as), they had a Hogsmeade day. For Harry that meant a day to visit Sirius (and Remus) in Dogwarts for a few hours, and the late afternoon found him curled up in a chair near the fire with the radio quietly playing in the background.

"A lot of these chairs seem like they're good as dog baskets," Remus chuckled. "I only just noticed that."

"Well, it _is_ Dogwarts," Sirius replied.

Then some oom-pa oom-pa music started playing on the radio, and Sirius sat up. "Oh, I recognize this one – turn it up, Remus!"

Remus duly did so, and Harry perked up an ear to listen.

Apparently it was a radio show that was 'the antidote to Panel Games', and featured a pianist and a chairman. And was very popular, from all the cheering from the audience.

It was a little bit odd – Harry didn't get some of the jokes from the chairman, because while he'd run into a lot of words in a lot of books none of them had informed him what a 'spiv' was – but when they started to sing one song to the tune of another (sometimes quite badly) it was just impossible not to laugh.

On the whole, Harry had that odd sort of feeling where he got some of the jokes and felt like he wanted to get the rest of them as well. It was a pleasant sort of feeling.

* * *

AN:

I'm sorry, I haven't a clue.

For the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw match then they'll swap so that Sally and Nora do blue-bronze and yellow-black flames respectively.


	75. Poster Modern Dragon

About a week before the end of November, posters started to appear around Hogwarts.

Harry saw the first one in the corridor near the Charms classroom on Tuesday, and stopped to have a look at it. It was stark black on white parchment, four feet tall, and it listed more than two dozen wizards and witches before announcing that Hogwarts' human-only policy had produced the best graduates of the institution.

"Wow," Ron said.

"Huh?" Dean asked, glancing at him. "I don't disagree, but is it anything in particular?"

"It's just… wow," Ron repeated. _"I_ can see the logical flaw in that one."

"It's nonsense, is what it is," Hermione said, and made to pull the poster off the wall. It didn't come off, at first, and she produced her wand and tapped it before removing the poster and rolling it up.

"Are you sure it's okay to do that?" Neville asked.

"If a teacher had put it up, they'd probably put their name on it," Harry said. "And if they didn't, they just need to do that. Right?"

He glanced at Hermione. "Is that how we do things?"

"You've been a prefect as long as me," Hermione replied. "But probably."

Harry had his own guess about who might have put it up, and she was a teacher. But nobody seemed to want to say it.

* * *

"You know it was Umbrage who put that up, right?" Ron asked, as they took their seats in Charms.

Harry privately revised his opinion about nobody seeming to want to say it.

"It probably was," Hermione agreed, putting the poster into her bag. "But if it doesn't say it's put up by a teacher, then it's not certain."

"That's cunning, that is," Ron declared. "Don't you think?"

"It certainly seems to be," Neville said.

"Someone find a Slytherin so we can ask them," Ron suggested.

"All right, everyone," Professor Flitwick said, getting their attention. "Today we will be covering a pair of spells – and, as you may have guessed, they are a pair because one of them is the counterspell to the other."

He pointed his wand into the air. _"Avis."_

There was a tremendous _bang_, and half a dozen birds came flying out of the tip of Professor Flitwick's wand. They all flew in circles, then out the window, and Harry watched them leave with a frown.

"Su," Flitwick added, and Harry saw she had had her hand up.

"Professor, I was wondering why the window was open," she explained. "It's warm in here, so there must be a charm making it be warm, but if you're going to show the counterspell don't you need the birds here?"

"An excellent observation," Professor Flitwick said. "In fact, neither of the spells we will be working on today is the bird-conjuring spell, because you have already learned that spell."

He smiled brightly. "Surprisingly, this is not revision! Instead, _this_ is the first spell we will be learning."

Holding his wand out in front of them, he waved it in a slow movement. _"Priori Incantatem."_

Misty smoke flowed out of the end of the wand, showing a monochrome image of a bird. The spell itself jogged Harry's memory a bit, and he seemed to recall Professor Dumbledore using it once in front of him years ago.

It was something about showing what the last spell you'd cast with the wand was?

"The thing about this spell which makes it so useful is that it references back to the wand," Professor Flitwick told them. "Though that is also a problem, for a few reasons we'll get into later. For now I want you to write this down as an example of a charm that is also a meta-spell, a spell which is about spells."

The class started taking notes, and Harry put the poster out of his mind.

* * *

After they'd learned about the other charm in the pair (_Deletrius_, the only way to make the smoky shadows go away), and taken notes about the way the spell worked and some examples of how it could act in odd ways, the lesson was over and Harry and his friends went off to break (and then, in three cases out of five, Runes).

Now that Harry was looking for them, even in a not-very-consciously-looking sort of way, he kept noticing more of those posters around the school. There was one on the way up towards Gryffindor which declared that _Teachers Know Best!_ and another one on the way back down to Runes which said that good children didn't break any school rules.

Both of those were the sort of thing that Harry could agree with in general, but they managed to be at the same time really kind of simplistic black-and-white statements (or in the case of the school rules poster, black and pink, because if Professor Umbridge _was_ behind them she'd started making some of them using pink parchment) that missed all the nuance, _and_ really condescending.

"I know we're technically still not adults until we turn seventeen, but _really_," Hermione said, as they waited outside Runes. "Does she think our school year is our age?"

That made Harry frown, as he was suddenly struck by a thought.

"It just occurred to me," he said. "I wasn't a dragon until I was in primary school, I think, but I was one by the time I was six. And based on how quickly Nora and the others are learning, I think they might be a lot smarter than me by the time _they're_ six."

"That'd be really weird to think about," Susan contributed, from a few places up the line. "I'm so used to dragons being… well, normal dragons, and you're sort of an exception. But if there are loads of exceptions, then..."

She shrugged.

"Well, in Fifth Year there's only one exception," Ernie said. "In Fourth Year there's more, and then more after that, and so on."

He smiled. "Still. There's only one year where it'll be the first."

There was a bit of silence after that, and Ron glanced over at Harry. "You know how you're going to make the sword for your Runes practical, right?"

"Yeah, or I've got a good idea," Harry replied. "I had this idea of using my breath to help heat up the metal, because it just sounds kind of neat."

"Are you sure you can make your fire hot enough?" Hermione asked. "I suppose you don't have to wear gloves when you're using a hammer on hot metal, or anything, and you wouldn't need to build a forge, but it seems like a lot more work than just Transfiguring it."

"Well, this is sort of a present for Neville as much as anything," Harry explained, though he was also thinking about how he could make his fire a _lot_ hotter than most people could guess.

He didn't want to burn Hogwarts down, though. So maybe he'd just need to use a normal make-fires-hotter spell?

* * *

"Excuse me, everyone," Dumbledore said the next day, standing up in the middle of dinner. "Professor Umbridge has asked me to make an announcement on the matter of posters."

He smiled pleasantly. "You see, Professor Umbridge has been putting up some posters, and it seems that some people have been taking them all down. While I can commend those people on their commitment to a tidy school, I would like to ask that we give the posters a try for a week or so to see how it all works out."

Dumbledore tapped his chin. "Of course, it occurs to me that it would be dreadfully lacking in variety for there to just be the one person making posters… but, well, there you go. Please do not take any posters down, and thank you all in advance."

Harry noticed that Professor Umbridge looked mortified.

Maybe it was because she wanted to be the only person allowed to put up posters, or perhaps instead it was because she thought that if everyone was told not to take down her posters then her posters would be taken down a lot.

Or maybe it was just that Dumbledore hadn't punished people for taking posters down. Professor Umbridge seemed like the sort of person who saw 'the number of people who got detention' as a way of keeping score for her tenure as a teacher.

* * *

Over the next few days, the halls of Hogwarts got a bit more colourful.

Naturally, some people had abused the freedom Dumbledore had allowed, and there were a few posters that Harry felt really did have to be taken down because they broke school rules about swearing – proper swearing, not saying Merlin a lot – so he sort of provisionally took them down and asked a teacher straight afterwards to be sure about the exception he thought applied.

Those _were_ the only exceptions, though, and most of the posters were of a wide range of quality but much more heartfelt – or funny – in what they said. A surprising and touching number of them said thank you to Harry, or to Tanisis or June, and while there were some which initially looked like they were sort of against Harry and all the other differently-shaped students looking closer made Harry _think_ that they were sarcastic.

Like the one which said 'Talking Dragons Are Unnatural, And So Are Trains, Ban Trains', or one which had a well-done picture of a dragon setting a wizard on fire.

When you looked closer, it turned out that the wizard in question was He Who Must Not Be Flamed. Or, at least, that was what the label sticking out of his robes said – next to that, the posters which were actually trying to say _properly_ negative things about Harry or about the other not-entirely-human students didn't look very well made or convincing.

Then there was one which asked if anyone had seen an escaped toad, adding that the toad in question had a Dreadful on its Defence course and seemed to think it could teach the subject anyway.

* * *

Defence Class that Monday was conducted in complete, icy silence. The loudest thing that happened was when someone coughed forty minutes into class, which lost Seamus fifteen House Points.

Then, at dinner, Dumbledore informed everyone that it had been a lovely experiment and that Professor Umbridge had asked that the posters come down again. He said that everyone would have two days to retrieve theirs, and perhaps decorate their common rooms, but that the halls would be best left unposterized from now on.

"That's sort of a pity," Dean said. "I asked my parents for ideas. I was halfway through drawing up a poster with a sphinx paw shaking hands with a human one."

"It can still go up in in the common room," Ron pointed out. "Or Ravenclaw can have it. I bet Luna would like it."

"He's got a point," Ginny said.

"Thanks," Ron smiled.

"And I don't say that much about him, so you can _really_ trust it," Ginny added, which led to Ron giving her a look.

* * *

"All right, so we're going to be doing the Impediment Jinx," Draco said one evening, twirling his wand between his fingers. "In case you haven't heard of that one, it's one which slows down or stops someone from moving – or something if you're boring."

He smirked. "It's useful in a duel for several reasons, and one of them is that if you can't dodge or aim your wand in a duel you're in trouble – and, what's more, it's one of those spells that doesn't have a lot of long term effect. The worst it can do is blast you backwards, and most spells do _that_. So I think we can practice it _properly…_ right, Potter?"

"That's right," Harry agreed, thinking about the mentions of the spell in the Practical Defensive Spellcasting books. "It's also good if someone has used Transfiguration to make things to help in a fight, because using the jinx on them will slow those down too."

He paused. "I don't think it works on dragons, though."

There was a general good-natured groan, and Draco shook his head. "You can't keep saying _everything_ doesn't work on dragons, Potter," he said. "Eventually it starts to count as boasting."

He twirled his wand again, this time right into his hand. "Would anyone like to help me demonstrate?"

June promptly stepped up, and started walking around at the front in a steady, even circle.

"_Impedimenta!"_ Draco said suddenly, flicking his wand across, and the spell jet hit June in the flank. She slowed down suddenly, stumbling and nearly stopping, then was visibly having to work hard to move.

The spell quickly wore off, though – after about ten seconds she started moving slowly again, and a few seconds after that she was back to normal.

"The wand movement is a sideways flick," Draco added, demonstrating it again. "_Do_ remember to end the flick with the spell pointing at the right person, or you might knock Creevey over again and nobody wants that."

"I'm fine so long as I don't land on my camera!" Colin called.

* * *

In the first astronomy lesson of December, Ron had a lot to say.

"It's one of those experiments that takes a really long time because space is so big," he said. "They first launched it in, um, 1989 I think? Which was before any of us came to Hogwarts – but it's only reaching Jupiter now."

"I didn't know you could reach Jupiter," Vincent muttered. "How did they do it?"

"They used a rocket to launch it into space," Ron told him. "Then it had to orbit the sun a couple of times to build up speed, I think, and then it just had to fly for years through space."

"Wouldn't it hit one of the asteroids?" Ernie said.

"Remember, the asteroids in the asteroid belt are still quite far apart!" Professor Sinistra told them.

"Oh, yeah, right," Ernie realized.

Ron turned the pages of the astronomy magazine that Harry had got for him. "And – right, it's already launched the little probe thing it was carrying. That's sort of like a smaller bit of Muggle technology, but they're going to send it straight into Jupiter to find out what it's like under the clouds."

"Won't it get destroyed?" Professor Sinistra said.

"Yeah, but they're going to have it send back what it learns by radio before it does," Ron explained. "It's already done it when it went past an asteroid. Though they do say it might be a long time before we get any photographs from Jupiter, because they're worried about the tape recorder."

"You mean they sent it all the way to Jupiter with a tape recorder that doesn't work, whatever one of those is?" Blaise asked.

"I mean, I've tried to work a tape recorder," Ron replied. "My dad tried to use one once and all the tape came out."

"It's going to be there for years," Harry pointed out. "Unless it gets killed first by being close to Jupiter."

Su Li raised her hand. "Sorry, is this the one that they're firing straight into a planet? How is that going to be there for years?"

"There's the probe which goes into Jupiter, and the orbiter which, er, orbits," Ron tried to explain. "Sort of explains itself, but it'd be easier if they hadn't both called them Galileo."

"Galileo?" Justin said.

"After the astronomer Galileo," Ron answered him.

"Figaro," Justin told him.

There was a long moment of silence.

"What?" Ron asked.

"Oh, right, Muggle Studies might not do that bit," Justin decided. "That's from Freddie Mercury."

"I thought we were talking about Jupiter," Gregory said quietly.

Professor Sinistra coughed slightly to get their attention. "Well, thank you for that, Mr. Weasley. It's always interesting to hear about what the Muggles are doing."

"That's not the only thing they're doing," Ron answered her. "It's not been launched yet, but it will be before next week – they're launching a space telescope to study the sun."

"That sounds like an _extremely_ expensive way to make something catch fire," Draco drawled. "Merlin knows _we're_ told not to look at the sun even without a telescope."

"It's okay, things don't catch fire in space," Harry informed him.

"I think it's best if we hear about those things later," Professor Sinistra decided.

She waited while Ron folded up his magazine, then continued. "Tonight we're going to be doing OWL revision. If you could all get your telescopes set up and, without help, locate the Andromeda galaxy."

* * *

In the Defence Club meeting the next day – one of the ones for Sixth and Seventh Years, where Harry was sort of along partly to see what he could learn and partly to help with showing off the Patronus Charm, as well as partly because he felt a vaguely proprietary air towards the club and it felt nice to attend – Cedric started off by holding up his wand and waving it at a chalkboard.

He didn't say anything at all, but the chalk rose into the air and began writing on the board.

_Silent Casting_, Harry read. _Silent casting can be useful because it's harder for your opponent to know what you're casting, and it's often quicker as well. The main downside is that the spell ends up a lot weaker unless you practice it a lot._

The chalk finished writing, and Cedric waved his hand at the board before starting to talk. "There's a bit more to it, and it's definitely a fiddly topic, but that's the basics to it. It's actually a good thing that the spells end up weaker, too, because it takes _concentration_ to cast a spell silently and if you don't concentrate on the right thing then you can end up not casting the spell… or, more importantly, casting the _wrong_ spell."

Harry winced, and he wasn't the only one.

Cormac was the first to go up and demonstrate, and he cast the Disarming Charm four times in a row under Cedric's guidance to show how consistent he was – which was to say, quite consistent.

"Good," Cedric summed up. "Now, point your wand at me and cast the charm, but don't actually _say_ the incantation – just think it."

It took Cormac three tries to actually cast the Disarming Charm at all. The first time he tried it normally, the second time he made the wand movement in a more exaggerated way, and the third time he really put a lot of effort into it and got a weak little fizzly jet of red light. It still hit Cedric and made his wand jump in his hand a bit, but it wasn't very strong at all.

"That's good!" Cedric told Cormac, though the background of giggles didn't really help. "You really need conviction – it's a bit like accidental magic, actually, because without the words to shape it you have to want it more."

Cormac tried again, and again, and after a few minutes he seemed to be starting to get the hang of it.

"Right," Cedric agreed. "We'll start off by casting at the walls – this spell's safe enough to do that with – then pair up once people are starting to get it."

Harry had to cast four or five times before the first time he got a jet of red light, and it didn't look very strong, but then it occurred to him that the difference between saying a word out loud and thinking it for silent magic was probably the same as the difference between saying something and using telepathy – like Pernese dragons did – and so the important thing to do was to pay attention to the difference between thinking something using telepathy and just thinking it because… well, because it was a thing you were thinking about.

It didn't seem like there was a proper English word for it, so Harry decided that thinking a word 'out loud' would be 'bespeaking' it.

With that realization made, it seemed quite a bit easier, and Harry bespoke the incantation for the Disarming Charm five times in a row and got five spell jets. One of them was sort of weak and wobbly, and only two looked good enough to actually disarm someone, but it was quite encouraging.

"Who's going to practice against Harry?" Lee Jordan asked. "He looks pretty good at it _and_ he's immune..."

"I'll do it," Cedric decided.

Harry wasn't sure if that was good news or not, and Cedric promptly proved that it wasn't. The Head Boy managed to disarm Harry three times without saying a word, each time by aiming for Harry's _wand_, before relenting and letting Harry get some silent-casting practice in.

* * *

Dumbledore invited Harry to his office for a talk over the weekend, not a particularly serious one this time but just one about the Tales of Beedle the Bard – the popular set of wizarding nursery stories, one of which mentioned the three Deathly Hallows and had thus turned out to be unexpectedly a little bit true – since Harry was someone who did _not_ have the Tales practically memorized since childhood and Dumbledore appreciated the perspective.

It turned out that, on top of having a job as a Headmaster and another job as a Chief Warlock, and another job as a Supreme Mugwump, and whatever it was a Grand Sorc did, along with trying to make sure Tom Riddle wasn't able to come back again, Dumbledore had been writing a book about the Tales. In his spare time, though Harry was quite surprised to discover that Dumbledore had any of that.

"It is a strange thing, spare time," Dumbledore agreed. "Work expands to fill it, and yet despite all that I find myself with spare time at the oddest moments. Perhaps it is because so many of the things I do in my jobs require other people to be there."

He smiled. "Are there any of Beedle's Tales that you especially enjoy, Harry?"

Harry had to admit that he wasn't really sure. The Fountain of Fair Fortune was sort of a nice story, because nobody needed the enchantment in it – so it was a little bit like _The Wizard of Oz_, perhaps – but the idea that the fountain really had no magic at all was a bit strange to Harry, because there was clearly a lot of magic involved in getting _to_ the fountain and so that sort of counted.

Then the story of the Hopping Pot had a nice moral to it, but Harry wasn't sure about that one either. And the Three Brothers was sort of fascinating, partly because he _had_ one of the things from the story, but at the same time…

"I don't really think any of them are something that I _especially_ enjoy, Professor," he had to admit. "I like them, but they're just not as important to me."

"That is perfectly fine, Harry," Dumbledore assured him. "If I thought I could tell someone to enjoy the same things that I do, rather than simply show them the wonder I feel and hope that they share it, I would not have got very far as a teacher."

Harry filed that away, as it seemed to be a very clever bit of advice.

He flicked through Dumbledore's manuscript to the middle, went back and forth a bit until he reached the start of discussing a particular story, and read it through while trying to think about all the things Dumbledore had written and what _he_ thought about them.

This particular story was Babbity Rabbity, and Harry had to admit that he was impressed with what Dumbledore had written. He said that the story told a young reader not to expect too much from magic, pointing to the times where Babbity Rabbity had told herself (and the reader) that a certain kind of magic couldn't be done at all, while at the same time teaching them that a lot of wonderful things could be done by magic.

He _also_ said that Babbity Rabbity could do things which showed the wondrous things magic could still achieve, such as that she was an Animagus, and that at the same time she could do some small things like speak while in another form that was not truly possible unless one's Animagus form happened to be a particularly loquacious parrot or crow or suchlike.

Finally there was a bit about what about the story Dumbledore liked, and what he didn't.

It was a nice, pleasant read, and Harry said so and that he couldn't really think of a thing that had been missed.

"That is wonderful news indeed, Harry," Dumbledore said, chuckling. "I am aware that you are something of a reader of many books, and if you have enjoyed this one then I feel I can face the public without fear."

He shook Harry's paw. "Thank you very much for the help, Harry, and for visiting to indulge an old man in his hobbies."

* * *

In Care of Magical Creatures they covered Thestrals, and as one of the members of the class who could actually _see_ them Harry got called upon by Professor Kettleburn to help describe them to everyone else.

Since Dean was also in the class, that turned into Harry describing things to Dean and Dean drawing them out, and Professor Kettleburn pronounced the result to be really quite a good sketch considering that the artist could not see what it was he was drawing. It did help a bit that Thestral wings were more bat-like, which meant more dragon-like, and Harry could just spread his wing and point out which bits were the same and which bits were different.

"Nobody is quite sure why it is that the Thestral breed in particular is magically invisible to those who have not seen someone die," Professor Kettleburn told them, as Harry helped feed the Thestrals and most of the rest of the class gasped.

It was something about seeing the food get torn apart by invisible claws and teeth which was so interesting, apparently, and Harry sort of wished he'd had this lesson_ before_ the Battle of the Forest's Edge or whatever name you wanted to give it. That way he'd be able to see what it was like and decide if it was interesting.

"Is it maybe a bit like how Harry's sort of unimportant to Muggles, Professor?" Dean asked.

"It might well be," Professor Kettleburn agreed. "Though it might not be, as well! I don't suppose you know if anyone who's seen someone die has seen you normally, Mr. Potter?"

"I imagine there must be some people in London who've seen someone die, Professor," Harry replied. "It's a very big city, and nobody's ever seemed to see me normally unless they're magical."

One of the Thestrals bumped into another, which fell over into the snow, and a few of the people over by that side of the class jumped in surprise as a large dent formed in the snow without any warning.

"Indeed, indeed!" Professor Kettleburn nodded.

He indicated the Thestrals. "And Thestrals are not exempt from the laws surrounding creatures such as winged horses and hippogriffs, which is that they should be covered by a Disillusionment Charm so that Muggles do not notice anything is amiss. Of course, someone taking care of a herd of Thestrals should take _extra _precautions, because buying steak for a horse is not the sort of thing that a Muggle would simply not notice!"

He clapped his hand against his artificial hand, then whistled, and one of the bat-winged horses stepped out of the crowd.

"Now, we're going to be covering how those who _cannot_ see Thestrals are to take care of them," he said, and revealed a kind of harness. "Nyx here is particularly placid. Who would like to help me put the harness on her?"

Harry didn't volunteer, because for him it would be a bit easier. It would be basically the same as a normal winged horse, in fact, except for using meat instead of hay.

* * *

On the very last day of term, after the final lesson of term had technically already happened, Ron looked up at the sound of cheering from a Wizarding Wireless.

"Tornadoes," he snorted, going back to his Runes work. "Everyone only supports them because they won the League."

"Wait, hold on," Dean requested. "How many Quidditch teams are there in Britain, mate?"

"Thirteen," Ron answered promptly.

"And how many of them _haven't_ won the League?"

"Well, none of them," Ron replied. "But I mean _recently_. Anyone can support a team that's won _recently_, it takes real dedication to support a team even though they're going through a dry spell."

"You mean like how the Sahara Desert is going through a dry spell?" Neville asked innocently.

"I'm sure the Cannons will recover eventually," Harry assured Ron, smiling.

"Blimey, I'm not sure I'd go _that_ far," Ron said.

Harry nodded. "Really. And then there'll be lots _more_ Cannons supporters."

"Right!" Ron agreed, then looked confused. "Wait. No. That'd be… hold on, I need to work this out."

* * *

AN:

Umbridge temperature: simmering.

Meanwhile, in Space News, it's 1995 (though not for much longer).


	76. Hog Many Dragons

The castle was emptier without about half to two thirds of the students, which was about the usual number that went home over the holidays.

It so happened that none of the Differently Shaped students left, for various and disparate reasons which Harry thought all made the same amount of sense, and all the Weasleys stayed as well. Neville went off home, as did Hermione and Dean, and the first morning after the train had gone Harry found Ron grumbling over a pile of homework.

"They do know what the point of the Christmas holiday is, right?" he asked, glancing up as Harry sat with him. "It's so we don't go stark raving mad over pressure over our OWLs."

"Does it work?" Ginny asked.

"Not with all this bloody homework," Ron told her.

He looked around, frowned, then shrugged.

"Something wrong?" Harry said.

"Oh, just that I was expecting to be told something about language," Ron explained.

"I could do it if you want?" Ginny suggested.

"Nah, it won't be the same," Ron waved her off. "Anyway, if you want to know if it works without doing any homework, ask Fred and George."

"Well, they're nutters, so it clearly doesn't," Ginny decided. "But then again, they were already nutters."

"I think that might actually just be the result of being good at magic," Harry suggested. "I know Hermione's unusually sensible, but look at Dumbledore."

"Blimey, you're right," Ginny said, in tones of awe. "If I get really good at magic I'm going to be _really_ weird."

"There are worse things to be, though, like boring," Harry opined.

That seemed to be generally accepted, and then Ron asked for a bit of help with his Muggle Studies. They were doing what it was like for Muggles in Victorian Times, and Harry had done that in primary school so he had a sort of set of vague ideas.

There were lots of trains, factories with small children working in them, coal mines, very tall top hats… and explorers, as well, for some reason. It seemed like there were a lot of explorers in Victorian times, but most of the ones Harry could remember seemed to spend their time either naming things after Queen Victoria, naming things after themselves, or getting lost. (Or, in some cases, finding other explorers who'd gotten themselves lost. That was what Harry presumed had been involved with Dr. Livingstone, after all.)

* * *

Such was the nature of the calendar for 1995 that Christmas Eve came on a Sunday – just two days after everyone had left for the holidays, in fact – and, since the restrictions about Hogsmeade were relaxed on holidays, the village was full of children getting last-minute presents. The sweet shop was doing a roaring trade as the snow drifted down, as indeed was the book shop, and Harry saw Fred and George taking some last-minute orders for things they'd be delivering early the next morning (probably, though not certainly, in mustelid shapes sneaking around after what would have been curfew had it not been outside term time).

Harry was briefly struck by the realization that he wasn't actually sure if it _was_ curfew outside term time, though after some more thought he decided it probably was. That led to thinking about how he'd been up late once to talk to Dumbledore about something, and _that_ set off a train of thought which had him turning to the fireplace.

"Is it okay if I go through into Diagon Alley?" he asked Sirius, who was doing something or other on Harry's Game Boy.

"Sure," Sirius agreed. "Don't go off with any suspicious strangers or set fire to anyone who doesn't deserve it."

* * *

A quick trip into Diagon Alley turned into a slightly longer trip, because Harry had to wait to see if what he wanted done _could_ be done and then for it to get done, but he was finished by half past four in the afternoon and was there in time to see Sirius proudly show off that he'd got a lot of points on Tetris.

Then it was dinner at Hogwarts, which was that peculiar case of 'I don't want to eat very much, because tomorrow is a feast', and everyone went off to bed to wait for Christmas Day.

Or, at least, _almost_ everyone.

Harry waited until it was after eleven PM, after everyone else had gone upstairs to the dorms, then opened the portrait hole and left with a specially prepared package.

Checking the Marauders' Map occasionally, Harry made his way down through one of the secret passages – the one which made it so you could skip a floor on the way up or down – and put down the parcel just in front of an unassuming washbasin. Then it was right back up to the Common Room, map and picture out and mirror ready, and at midnight he tapped the blacked-out mirror he'd inherited.

"Empress?" he asked.

"_You seem a little early,"_ she said, sounding amused. _"If I am keeping track of the days correctly, it is the night of Christmas Eve where it becomes Christmas Day. Is that right?"_

"That's right," Harry confirmed.

"_I'd thought I had such a good track of the days, until you corrected me,"_ Empress said. _"It is good to know I have made no mistakes since."_

"Actually I think that's Muggles' fault," Harry frowned. "A Pope called Gregory changed the calendar hundreds of years ago, because Christmas wasn't anywhere near the shortest day of the year any more. It wasn't many days of difference, but that's probably why you got confused."

"_Well… it's nothing like what Salazar was thinking of, that is certain,"_ Empress chuckled.

"Oh!" Harry said, remembering. "Do you know where you found this mirror – I mean, when I first left it for you?"

Empress confirmed that she did.

"I left something for you there," Harry explained. "Because it's Christmas. I thought you should have a gift, like everyone else gets gifts at Christmas."

After a moment of silence, Harry went on. "Go ahead and have a look. I can wait."

There was an extended period of slithering after that, and Harry transferred his attention to the Map to make sure nobody was anywhere near where Empress was about to come out.

It seemed safe, and after a few minutes she appeared on the map. Then paused, for longer than it had taken her to reach it in the first place.

"Do you like it?" Harry asked, worried.

He thought the _idea_ was good, at least – he'd asked the man who'd made Ron's griffin statuette to take some of the ones he'd made and make them much more durable, as well as enlarging them and making it so they didn't have to be touched by a _wand_ to activate, just a magical creature.

It had been sort of expensive, but Bestiary Frakes had seen it as a challenge, and accordingly Harry had got Empress a three foot golden fire-lizard to brighten things up a little in the Chamber of Secrets.

"_...do you know, Harry,"_ Empress began, after several minutes of silence, _"I think this is the first time I have ever had a present."_

"It's not a problem," Harry tried to say, but Empress kept going.

"_I think the reason it has affected me so much is that it shows how different you are to Salazar, and to the Gaunts, and to Riddle,"_ she said. _"So here is a secret."_

She hissed, long and melancholy. _"I am enchanted. By Salazar, since birth, and it means that if anyone gives me an unambiguous order in the language of the serpents I must obey it. _That_ is how it was that I killed at Riddle's orders fifty-three years ago."_

"And that's why it counted as _him_ killing her, not you," Harry countered. "I already talked about that with Dumbledore, a long time ago."

He frowned, thinking about how she'd phrased that. "When you say unambiguous, you mean something that's not just a part of conversation?"

Empress told him that it was, and Harry started thinking deeply about that.

It felt like there was something there to _solve_ that problem…

* * *

For the next half hour or so, Harry was mostly occupied with reading out a bit more of their Pern book rather than deducing a solution to Empress' problem.

He couldn't quite shake the idea that he'd read something a bit like it before, though.

They were now into _The White Dragon_, which Harry had suggested they should read before going on to _Dragondrums_, and that meant following Jaxom and Ruth quite closely. It was a slightly different sort of story, especially since with Jaxom they were following someone who was a dragonrider and wasn't one at the same time, and it was nearly one in the morning when Harry apologized and said he should get to bed soon.

He didn't go _straight_ to bed, though. He went upstairs to his tent, but instead of lying on his hoard and going to sleep Harry instead began rummaging through it and looking for the books which reminded him of the problem Empress had.

The first was _The Return of the King_, where Eowyn and Merry were the ones to fight and kill the Witch-King of Angmar because there was a rule that 'no man' could kill him. It wasn't quite what Harry was after, though, and he moved on from there to one of his Dungeons and Dragons books.

The spell _Geas_ (or _Quest_) was sort of right, because it was about making rules that someone could obey or disobey, but it said that either there had to be a way out of the rules or it only lasted a year or so. It was also just something that made someone feel really sick if they didn't follow it, but the way that Empress described _her_ problem sounded a lot worse than that.

Next Harry moved on to _Vows and Honor_ (which felt like it should be _Vows and Honour_, but book titles didn't get changed to British apparently) where the sword Need had a geas on it that did sometimes force the characters to do things. Skimming through Harry was mostly reminded that they _couldn't_ work around it, though, which wasn't what he was aiming for.

About twenty minutes past one, Harry finally found what he was thinking of in _The Last Command. _ Mara Jade had been ordered by the Emperor to kill Luke Skywalker, and she'd managed to solve it by killing _Luuke_ Skywalker instead… which wasn't quite a solution to Empress' problems by itself, but it did sort of point towards one.

Harry decided to let the idea fizz, and curled up for a somewhat belated night's sleep.

* * *

His dreams were mostly full of Mara Jade running in with a pink lightsaber to save Empress from the Witch King.

* * *

"Morning!" Ron called. "Mind if I come in?"

"Oh, um… sure," Harry replied, shaking himself awake and yawning. "Sorry, I got a bit of a late night last night."

He stretched his wings, flexing his spine down as he did, and then his forelegs and hindlegs in sequence. That about handled his morning routine, and when he went into the kitchen of his tent Ron was already piling presents on the table.

"They left yours on your bed this time," Ron explained. "I thought I'd bring them in. Sorry if I woke you up, mate."

"It's fine," Harry replied, glancing at the clock.

Ron handed him the first one with a _Harry_ label, and they got going in companionable silence.

Neville's present was a Bonsai tree in a special pot, which came with a label that said all the plant would need was watering once a week. Neville's accompanying letter explained that it was something he'd found in reading about Herbology, and that he knew not everyone had as much time to care for plants as him so he'd found a way to get Harry a plant that looked nice without needing much care.

Sirius, meanwhile, had managed to find a computer game that was about the Discworld. He admitted that it would be quite an adventure finding a way to _play_ it, and that if they couldn't work out whatever it was that was stopping things like TV screens working at Hogwarts then perhaps Harry would need to play it over the holidays at Grimmauld Place, but Harry was pleased by it anyway – not least because it showed in a very pleasant way that Sirius genuinely cared what Harry liked – and there was also a small Wizarding travel board game set, which interrupted the present opening for ten minutes while Harry and Ron played two games of Fox and Geese.

It was much easier to play those odd side-games than it would have been with a Muggle set, because in the Wizarding version you just had to tell it which one of the games you wanted to do and the pieces would arrange themselves accordingly.

Ron got some good presents as well, like a Game Boy of his own from Sirius – this time along with a cartridge for a game starring a squirrel, which Harry thought was a bit on the nose but Ron just sniggered before asking to borrow one of Harry's games some time.

Harry had got him a book, and unfortunately he hadn't been able to find anything quite as good as the _Ignition_ book about rocket science. Instead he'd opted for an annual from the _Beano_, which Ron had a quick look through and pronounced as very funny even if he didn't know who most of the characters were, and Harry considered that to be pretty much a win.

He'd also considered a book about chemistry with a title involving bromide, but when he'd looked through it in the second hand bookshop _Harry_ hadn't been able to unscramble most of the oblique references to Muggle life. He didn't want to give Ron something that would probably qualify simultaneously as an Alchemy and Muggle Studies NEWT course, so the comic annual was pretty much the best thing available.

Then Ginny flew in to tell them that it was lunch soon, which surprised Harry because he hadn't realized quite how many games they'd been playing on the travel board game set.

* * *

It was sort of a Hogwarts tradition to have a snowball fight on Christmas Day, even more than the usual way in which people liked to have snowball fights when there was snow to fight with, and after a quick lunch of scrambled egg, smoked salmon and toast Harry went out to do his bit. So did almost everyone else who'd stayed in Hogwarts over the holidays, and the first warning Harry had that the _Smiths_ were among them was when two dozen snowballs shot vertically upwards from behind a drift – then split up, and went flying in to hit every single person nearby.

"That's one of ours!" Fred shouted. "We've got patent pending on that!"

Anna replied with a scoff, then tapped the drift with her wand before vanishing back into the snow.

Melody raised a hand. "I'm new at this. Should we be worried?"

"Only if the snow starts to tremble," George informed her.

The snow started to tremble.

"Run!" Ron shouted, and then the whole snowdrift exploded.

Snow went absolutely everywhere, some of it even hitting Isaac who was flying high overhead, and the largest amount of it knocked Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail over in a chorus of shouts and barks.

"That deserves revenge, that does," Ron said.

He nodded at Ginny. "Keep an eye on them for us, will you?"

"Me?" Ginny asked. "Why me? Why not Harry?"

"Because Harry's the one who can go and recruit help," Ron explained.

He put his hands around his mouth. "Oi! Temporary truce to get the Smiths!"

"Excellent idea!" Ernie called back, shaking his own snow out of his hair.

"Help?" Harry asked, then realized what Ron had to mean.

* * *

The Smiths fought bravely (and cleverly, and cunningly, and indeed hard-working-ly), but in the end it was a little hard to compete with so many wizards and witches.

Especially when the dragons Harry had recruited got the hang of accurate bombing, which meant that in the middle of a fight about ten or fifteen kilos of snow would just land on top of someone. The downside of that was that they didn't actually _stop_, and once Taira and Anna surrendered what had been an 'everyone versus the Smiths' snowball fight quickly turned into 'everyone versus the dragons'.

As a dragon, naturally, Harry was on the dragon team. As far as he was concerned they did quite well, overall, and Gary, Sally, Ollie and Nora found the whole thing great fun.

He _did_ have to remove a slightly worrying amount of snow from inside his robes, though.

* * *

The Christmas Feast was simply remarkable. All four of the dragons were in attendance, this time, lounging against the walls and on their best behaviour – Nora even hummed along with the choir performance of_ Simple Gifts _– but that was almost like a side detail compared to the food.

Harry was no stranger to some of the ways the Hogwarts House-Elves could combine flavours, like carrots cooked underneath a roast chicken and baked potatoes filled with chopped onion, bacon and cheese, but it was Christmas where they _really_ brought out the specialities. From roast vegetables made with Parmesan cheese, to taking Brussels sprouts and doing them in what Ron said was called a gratin, to a kind of super-sized stuffing with sausage, bread and kale.

Then there was the Christmassy gnocchi which was made of Brussels sprouts and served with a bread-sauce sauce, one of those things it seemed like only wizards could have come up with, and somewhat incongruously a giant Christmas pizza that had entire sausages and roast potatoes on top of it.

Harry had to be quite careful not to eat too much, even without his habit of occasionally biting the head off a fork, because they hadn't even got to the desserts yet.

"Do you ever wonder if House-Elves compete with one another?" Ron asked.

"I know they _talk_ to one another," Ginny said. "Look."

She cut a slice from something in front of her and held it up for Ron to see. It smelled of something nutty, and duck, and it seemed as though there was cheese in there as well.

"...didn't I mention that to Dobby once?" Ron said.

"That's what I was thinking," Ginny agreed. "And he said he'd need six helpers to make it."

"Neat," Ron decided, taking it and cutting a slice himself.

"...you know this slice was for you, right?" Ginny asked.

"Two slices, then," Ron declared, and took it.

* * *

The desserts were just the same sort of thing. One that particularly caught Harry's eye was a three-layered cake, where each layer had a belt of squares of white and black chocolate on top (each belt three squares thick, except for the top layer which was six squares on a side), and there were dozens of fudge chesspieces hopping around in knight's moves or diagonally or in straight lines.

When Fred cut a piece, it happened to have a knight and a bishop on, and the two pieces kept hopping steadily around on the squares as though that was the whole chessboard.

"What about that one?" Melody asked, pointing to a metal dish cover that was just a little too far away for her to reach. "I think they forgot to take the cover off."

Harry reached over to see what it was, but when his paw closed on the handle for the cover it just came off.

"Didn't think you were _that_ strong," said Lee, as Harry inspected the handle.

Then he ate it.

"Oh, I _see_," he said, licking at it inside his muzzle. "It's fondant. That's a novelty cake."

"Well, it had _me_ fooled," Melody admitted, as Lee started to cut into it.

* * *

After the feast, and after Dumbledore had given a shorts speech (which, in this case, was a two minute speech about the item of clothing), and after Harry had belatedly noticed that Professor Umbridge hadn't been in attendance – or maybe she'd just left early – it was finally time to go up to bed.

The little idea that Harry had been having about Empress' problem had grown into a bigger idea, but still not a complete idea, and he decided to ask to see Professor Dumbledore the next day to ask him what he thought about it.

There might need to be an experiment done first.

* * *

Hedwig took Professor Dumbledore the message that Harry wanted to speak to him – it seemed safer to send a letter than Ruth, and besides, Harry didn't want to give Hedwig nothing to do – and Harry got a reply back around lunchtime which told him that the password to the office was currently 'Sweets'.

Harry couldn't tell if that was genius or really silly.

Deciding it was probably both, he went up there about one in the afternoon (after, of course, checking that Dumbledore was in) and Dumbledore waved to him as he came over the lip of the stairs.

"Good afternoon, Harry," he smiled. "Do you know, someone gave me something for Christmas and it's kept me quite occupied since? It's been marvellously relaxing."

Harry's ears twitched. He looked interested, or probably did, because Dumbledore lifted the object from his desk and showed it off.

As soon as Harry saw it he sort of wanted to laugh. It was a Rubik's Cube, one of those things with coloured squares on the faces and you rotated them around to line up.

"My cousin Dudley had one of those," he said. "He got it one birthday. I think it lasted about ten minutes before he threw it onto the roof, and when it fell off the roof again it came apart into bits."

"Well, I can perhaps understand his being a little frustrated," Dumbledore said lightly, twisting it around. "I believe you scramble it up and then unscramble it again?"

Harry nodded, confirming Dumbledore's guess.

"Well, I appear to be very good indeed at the first part, but the second part is giving me a little trouble," Dumbledore confessed. He took a good long look at it, hesitantly twisted one of the sides one way, then put it down. "Anyway. What was it you wanted to discuss, Harry?"

"I was speaking to Empress, just at the end of Christmas Eve and the start of Christmas Day," Harry explained. "I got her something as a present, because I thought she hadn't had one before."

At that, Dumbledore looked quite sad.

"I am most impressed with you, Harry," he declared. "Many of the people who do not like me declare me to be a sentimental old fool, and while I must confess to being old – and I quite like being described as sentimental, for I do not see it as the problem they do – it seems that I must admit to being a fool as well, as I had not thought of that."

He waved towards his desk with all the funny silver instruments on it, and now he was looking at it again Harry saw there was something new there – sort of like a pair of swimming goggles, but made of silver everywhere including the eye bits.

"I have been working on our problem with Empress, but my first attempt has not proven effective," Dumbledore explained. "These mirror goggles would permit Empress to see without directly looking at anyone, were I to expand them to her size, but – alas – she would still petrify everybody who happened by unless the goggles were painted over to render her blind as well."

Harry said that was a good effort, and Dumbledore nodded slightly.

"I can see you have been practicing in how to be a good teacher," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "But I had not thought of getting our serpentine friend any sort of present."

"It's more than that, Professor," Harry said.

He went on, explaining about Empress' confession, and Dumbledore sat back and looked thoughtful.

The Headmaster continued to look thoughtful as Harry walked through his thoughts since then, explaining about how it seemed like things like that usually had loopholes and talking about Mara Jade's one in particular, and when he finally finished Dumbledore was silent for a long time.

"A difficult conundrum indeed," he said, slowly. "It reminds me a little of the Unbreakable Vow, which is a fearsome piece of magic and one I would not recommend using without the advice of an _extremely_ good lawyer. In this case, however, I believe that there may be a solution."

"I've already got an idea, but I sort of want to test it," Harry explained. "Would that be all right?"

He rummaged in his pocket. "I've got the mirror, but I don't have a picture of a dragon or something to change how I speak into Dragonish."

"I believe I have you covered there, Harry," Dumbledore told him, and opened one of the drawers of his desk.

From within came a Wizarding photograph, one taken when Nora was about six or seven months old. She was tilting her head and looking at whoever was holding the camera, then lifting her head and breathing fire for a bit before flaring her wings and looking expectant.

"I think that will work?" Harry tried, then looked from the photograph to Dumbledore.

"Entirely reptilian," Dumbledore confirmed.

* * *

Empress seemed to be asleep, and Harry felt a little guilty about it but he sent Ruth down to wake her up. That worked, and though she sounded a little groggy it helped when Harry explained that he had an idea about what to do with the thing she'd explained to him.

"First I kind of want to do a test?" Harry said. "The only thing I'll be ordering you to do is to hit the wall with your tail, and then you can say if you did it. Is that okay?"

"_If it will help,"_ Empress decided, sounding resigned.

"Okay," Harry said. "So if I said 'I order you to hit that wall with your tail' in English, it would be 'I order you to hit that wall with your tail'."

Saying that felt a little weird, because it was saying the same thing twice as far as Harry was concerned – just with his eyes closed once – but that was how this sort of thing worked.

He waited until a puzzled affirmative came from the mirror, then – still with his eyes closed – ordered Empress to hit the wall with her tail.

Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then Empress said that she hadn't done anything.

"Great!" Harry replied, switching back to looking at the dragon picture now that he knew anything in a different language didn't count. "Empress, I order you to from now on consider this language to be Dragonish and not Parseltongue."

"_...what?"_ Empress asked, sounding baffled.

"I order you to hit that wall with your tail," Harry finished.

There were several seconds of silence.

"…_I… can hardly believe..."_ Empress said, hesitantly. _"How did that..."_

After a long silence, she spoke again. _"Thank you."_

"I take it that it worked, Harry?" Dumbledore checked, and Harry gave him an affirmative nod. "Wonderful news. And I am glad to hear it, Empress."

He put down the Rubik's Cube with a _click_, and Harry glanced over at it.

All six faces were now solved.

* * *

After that great result, Harry found himself a bit less satisfied with the rest of the holiday.

It wasn't entirely clear why, at first. He had several books to read, one of them the fourth proper Dragonlance book (_Dragons of Summer Flame_) and that should have helped a lot, but it seemed like the things the authors were doing were a bit odd. And when it was time for homework, he couldn't really focus on the homework.

It was when Ron asked him if he was all right that Harry realized what was going on, making the connection with how he'd been feeling itchy, and he told Ron that he was sorry but he was going to be vanishing into his tent and probably not coming out for a couple of days.

That led to Harry having to explain to Ron how his molting worked, and because – even though he knew what was going on – Harry _was_ still feeling irritable that led into a digression about how he might be the only dragon in the world who had to deal with that sort of thing.

He wasn't the only _person_ in the world who had to, probably, because of Empress. But he didn't mention that bit to Ron.

That in turn meant that he missed a couple of days of the holiday, and though it was probably better than if the same thing had happened during term time it didn't help with Harry's general mood. He shoved all the old hide into a cupboard to deal with later, groaned when he realized that now none of his robes and clothes and things fit any more, and mirror-called Sirius to let him know they'd need to go shopping to Diagon Alley in a hurry.

Really, the awful thing about molting was that it was itchy _and_ inconvenient, and both of those things put him in a bad mood so having them both at once just made it easy to be in a _very_ bad mood.

* * *

"Sorry about what happened, mate," Ron said, a few days later.

It wasn't the first time Ron had said the same sort of thing, and Harry chuckled.

"I don't think it was your fault," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but still..." Ron mumbled, and turned the page in the manual he was reading.

Still looking at the manual, he picked up one of the wrenches on Hagrid's table. "Mate, can you hold the caliper steady?"

Harry picked up the caliper – it was a bit of bike brake that Ron wanted to use in the control systems for his rocket – and braced his elbow against the table, so it wouldn't move.

"Thanks," Ron said, and started unscrewing. "Rotate counterclockwise until the bolt is loose..."

On the other side of Hagrid's kitchen table – which was a big table, so it had plenty of space – Hagrid turned the page of one of the big colourful children's books he'd asked Harry for.

"That's an F," he said.

"F," Nora repeated, looking closely. "Does that mean you spell Effort with an F?"

"Not at the start," Hagrid told her. "In words it's got different sounds. So F is what starts the word Fish."

"Fish," Nora said. "I see the F."

"Right!" Hagrid agreed. "And it also starts words like face, and fly."

"It's sort of like a fuh sound, sometimes," Harry contributed.

He had no idea whatsoever how that got translated into Dragonish, but Nora seemed to get that a bit. She nodded brightly, and while she was nodding Hagrid got out a piece of slate and some chalk – not for the first time.

He chalked F-A-C-E on the board. "This is the word face."

"Oh!" Nora gasped. "I know all of those!"

She poked the chalkboard. "Those make a face?"

"They make the word face," Harry explained. "It's not a face, but it's like… making it so the sound is written down."

Nora nodded solemnly.

"So you could tell someone something without being there?" she asked. "With letters and things? If you didn't have a mirror for them?"

"That's right," Harry agreed.

"Right, I think that's got it," Ron said, and Harry turned his attention back to his friend.

Ron had put down the wrench, and was fiddling with a kind of cylinder shaped thing attached to the other end of the cable.

"You can put it down now," Ron added. "I want to see if I can squeeze this enough as Nutkin."

He put the cylinder thing down, put his hands on the table, and shrank down into his squirrel form. Bounding over to the brake handle with his tail waving up and down, he took both sides of the handle – one in each paw – and squeezed.

It seemed to take quite a lot of effort, and Ron held it for maybe twenty seconds before letting go. He panted a bit, then scampered over to the edge of the table and did an odd sort of hurdle movement. For a moment his paw was resting on the edge of the table and the rest of him was jumping over the edge, then he grew back to normal Ron size and frowned.

"I'm not sure that's going to work," he said. "If I make it stiff enough to not open without being squeezed, I can't keep it squeezed for long enough."

He picked up his wand. "Maybe I need to make the handle longer?"

"What about if you use the gear thing?" Harry asked. "That holds in place."

"That's not a bad idea," Ron said, clearly thinking about it. "I think they both use a wire that gets pulled, anyway…"

"What's that?" Nora asked, looking at the current picture in the alphabet book.

"Umm..." Hagrid frowned.

Harry checked what it was, because it sounded like Hagrid didn't know that word, then looked at Nora.

"It's sort of a house made out of ice," he explained to her. "They make them where it's much colder than this, and where they don't have castles."

"Castles are better to live in," Nora announced, then poked the picture with a careful talon. "This is made of blocks too though."

"Well spotted," Harry said. "That's right!"

He wasn't sure quite when human children started learning to read – he had vague memories of a lot of it being in Primary School – but Nora seemed to be old enough to get a lot of use out of it.

* * *

AN:

The idea of a compulsion isn't strictly canon, but can be inferred.

Also, it's Christmas.


	77. Alchemysteries

"Attention, please," Professor McGonagall said, at the start of their first Transfiguration lesson of 1996.

It wasn't their first _lesson_ of the year, Harry had already had Arithmancy and History of Magic, but it was still the first _Transfiguration_ lesson of the year.

"It is now less than six months until your OWLs," she informed Harry, and by extension the rest of the class. "I know you may already have heard this from a teacher in one of your other classes, but your OWLs are one of the two most important sets of exams in your life."

Seamus put his hand up, and Professor McGonagall called on him.

"So that means we should stress out about it, Miss?" he asked.

"It means, Mr. Finnegan, that you should take your exams seriously," she informed him. "I see more people fail because they do not take their exams seriously than because they take their exams _too_ seriously, and the OWL examiners are not foolish about such things – they can tell if you have learned the material, or have not bothered to do so."

After letting that warning hang in the air for a bit, the teacher continued. "Now, today we will be covering the principle of similarity. If you do not remember that we have already covered this topic, I hope you pay extra attention."

Harry did remember, but he paid extra attention anyway as Professor McGonagall quickly went through the basics again.

It was the idea that Transfiguration spells were easier – both to invent and to successfully perform – when there was some kind of similarity between the starting object and the finishing object. The more types of similarity the better, and they didn't have to be physical ones either.

It seemed that, while they were not going to be doing free Transfiguration or the invention of Transfiguration spells for their OWL practicals, they would be expected to demonstrate a theoretical knowledge of the subject – or, rather, they _might_ be, because that was how OWLs worked. You didn't know what the topic was going to be ahead of time.

Professor McGonagall called on different students to give examples of similarities, some of them from spells they'd done before (like turning a tortoise into a teapot, or a teapot into a tortoise, where the similarities included things like the legs and the hard shell) and some from entirely novel situations (like turning a book into a bat, which Harry thought was a waste of a good book). In Harry's case he had to explain what similarities you might draw upon when turning a badger into a bottle, and the best he could come up with was the shape of the muzzle was sort of like the neck of a bottle.

That was fine, though, because it wasn't one of the ones they'd done before. One similarity was enough to be going on with, though apparently another one would be that a badger was durable and you wanted durability in a bottle.

* * *

"Oh, you know how we got tickets to the Quidditch World Cup?" Dean asked, one evening. "Shame we can't do the same to the Euros."

"The Euros?" Ron repeated. "What's that?"

"I think it's football?" Hermione guessed, but Dean blinked before picking up Ron's Muggle Studies textbook.

"Oi," Ron protested half-heartedly, looking down at his half-written description of the history of Muggle lighting.

He was almost up to the light bulb, by the looks of the sketches he'd included.

"Sports," Dean mumbled, flicking through. "Football… there we go."

He examined it, then snorted. "Yeah, should have guessed, they don't bother. Anyway, the Euros are sort of… the football World Cup only happens every four years, and there's a European Cup in the off-years. This time it's in England – and it really could be our year."

"Is that like how every year really could be West Ham's year?" Neville teased.

"Hey, I know we're out of the League Cup, but we won our first game of the FA Cup," Dean countered. "And we're not out of the Premiership yet!"

"Who was that first game against?" Hermione asked, sensibly.

"...well, Southend United, but they're not terrible," Dean said. "But football's coming home! It could be England's year!"

He looked enthusiastic for another few seconds, then visibly deflated and shrugged. "Or not."

"That's an odd mixture of passion and fatalism," Harry observed.

"I think it comes from supporting West Ham," Dean replied. "If you expect them to be plucky but a bit naff, you can't really be disappointed but it's really exciting if things take a turn for the better."

Ron quite ostentatiously took notes, which set off a round of giggles.

* * *

A letter turned up on Harry's plate that Monday, courtesy of Hedwig, and in familiar handwriting it asked if Harry had a free evening at some point in the next two weeks.

It went on to add that the writer – who referred to himself only as 'I' – could unfortunately not give Harry the password at that point, since the period of time in question was long enough that there was no one password which applied. However, if Harry did happen to have the free time available, in between teaching people Defence and doing his own work, he could simply send a letter or Patronus to 'I' and request the password for the time he would actually be calling by.

It was at about that point that Harry decided Dumbledore had to have been writing the letter in a silly way deliberately. It was possible that Dumbledore might simply have forgotten to make his identity clear, but when there were sentences like '_I would recommend that in the meantime you do not finalize your Runes project, because it seems to I that I would be able to help_' it was a little harder to write it off as an innocent mistake.

As for actually taking up the offer, Harry had to admit that his week was quite busy. There was the Defence Club four out of the seven days of the week – he was doing the Patronus in both the OWL and NEWT level sessions, while his role in the Key Stage 3 sessions was essentially to serve as a target who could criticize your spellcasting – and Wednesday there was Astronomy, while tonight Harry was doing patrolling.

So that meant it was either Sunday evening or Monday next week. Or Wednesday before Astronomy, but that was usually a time when Harry did homework with his friends because they all had to stay up for Astronomy anyway.

It was surprisingly hard to schedule things now. Harry supposed it was one downside of the Defence Club, though it was definitely overall a good thing – he'd already learned a lot more by teaching than he'd expected.

* * *

Harry wasn't entirely sure at this point if Professor Umbridge still had a plan. He wasn't willing to start assuming she _didn't_, because she was still having them learn (or, at least, read) from the same textbook.

Harry had finished it weeks ago and was quite a long way into rewriting the ideas in much simpler language – which meant that, fairly soon, he'd have to come up with something else to do in Defence Against the Dark Arts class.

Maybe write something else?

Part of Harry was still thinking about that as he reached Dumbledore's office on the fifteenth of January, and he cleared his throat. "Empire."

The gargoyle stepped aside, and Harry climbed what were now becoming familiar stairs into what was now becoming a familiar office.

"Good evening, Harry," Dumbledore said, getting up from behind his desk. "I am most gratified that you have decided to pay me a visit."

"I've never heard of Empire sweets, Professor," Harry admitted. "That's the thing which confused me."

"I believe it is a bar of chocolate, dating from the War," Dumbledore told him. "That is, the War that is meant when Muggles talk about the War. I do not mean to say that it was from the nineteen-seventies."

Harry thought about the British Empire, and said that that made sense.

"Excellent," Dumbledore said. "Now, I fear I should ask you a question. Do you have any idea which subjects you would like to take for your NEWTs?"

"Well, Defence and Charms and Transfiguration are all sort of defaults," Harry replied, thinking about it. "I'm not sure about Care of Magical Creatures, it's interesting but I more _am_ one… though maybe I should just because it's safer for me to deal with a lot of dangerous creatures."

"Take it from me, Harry, to do something because you are good at it is not a good reason by itself," Dumbledore said. "Though to do something because you _enjoy_ it is a fine reason, and indeed I would say it is reason enough even if you happen not to be very good at it. Passion can solve quite a lot of problems."

He smiled. "What about your other classes?"

"Well, most of them are interesting," Harry replied. "I think I could probably learn History of Magic just as well by reading textbooks… and, well, Runes and Arithmancy are the sort of thing that I feel like I could learn a lot from."

Dumbledore nodded.

"I take it from that, then, that you do not find yourself so interested in Potions and Herbology," he said. "Since they do not come to mind so readily. No," he added, as Harry started to protest. "You should not be embarrassed about it, Harry. I find that these kinds of things can be quite useful in discovering what you are truly interested in, when you yourself are not sure."

He walked over to a cupboard, and opened it. It turned out to be full of strange equipment, including a small brick stove and a variety of assorted glass flasks and bottles.

Conjuring a stone slab onto his floor, Dumbledore moved the brick stove out of the cupboard and onto the slab. That was followed by a small folding bench, half a dozen bits of glassware, and then an ingot of metal which Harry had to look at a second time.

Something about it was oddly familiar.

"Professor, what's that?" he asked.

"Ah, this is a marvellous metal which alchemists have sought to make for thousands of years," Dumbledore told him. "The formula to make it was complex indeed, and required soil from certain locations in Greece heated in an intense fire with a crystal of jadeite and reduced by quartz. I will not bore you with all the details, for as it happens this method – while it worked – was terribly slow and tedious."

"Doesn't that mean that's really valuable, then?" Harry said.

"It would have been, were it not for the work of Muggles," Dumbledore told him. "While the alchemical arts are subtle, and while alchemy can do many things that muggles cannot, those of us who pay any attention at all to what the muggle world is doing did notice when they started to produce one of our prized achievements in staggering quantities. What that is, Harry, is an ingot of aluminium."

He withdrew a second ingot from the cupboard, this one much more familiar – iron, if Harry was right – and placed the two of them side by side.

"It occurred to me, Harry, that perhaps I should demonstrate what alchemy is _like_ so that you can decide if you would be interested," he said. "And, in the process, I might be able to help you by producing the base for your Runes project. Does that sound agreeable, do you think?"

Harry said that it certainly did, and won a smile from the Headmaster.

"Very well, then, to begin," Dumbledore said. "You have probably already noticed in much of your magical education that quite a lot about magic depends on who is doing it and why."

"You mean what you want to happen, Professor?" Harry checked. "So you can say the same words and move your wand in the same way and different things happen?"

"Exactly," Dumbledore told him with a smile.

He tapped one of the alembics, which made a ringing sound. "The same is true of alchemy, and that is what makes it quite different from potions. Potions, if I may be so bold, is that part of alchemy which has been tamed, while alchemy is a little more… wild."

That sounded a little dangerous to Harry, and he said so.

"Do not worry, Harry, it will be quite safe," Dumbledore assured him. "What we shall be doing is making an alloy of aluminium and iron, and furthermore we will be making it so that it is highly durable except to one specific method of melting."

Placing the two ingots side by side, Dumbledore began setting up the equipment. "Much of the art of alchemy is in making use of similarities, differences, and properties. So we will be giving the aluminium and the iron an affinity to one another by melting them both in the same place, by the same method, at the same time, and enhancing that affinity by the addition of tar and beeswax – which, you see, are both sticky."

He frowned. "Though we should first check to be sure that tar and beeswax do in fact stick to your skin, or otherwise it could have quite the opposite effect."

* * *

After some simple – if messy – tests, it turned out that both pine tar and beeswax did indeed stick to Harry's scales. Harry then asked if it was okay to eat the unwanted ingredients in alchemy, and Dumbledore assured him that it was so long as they were indeed unwanted ingredients.

"Some of the things used in alchemy are quite valuable, after all," he explained. "But that does not apply to tar, and it does not apply to beeswax, so I would say you should go ahead."

Harry quickly licked the sticky substances off the backs of his paws, so it wouldn't get on his robes, and Dumbledore chuckled before setting up some of the equipment.

"It happens that pine tar melts at a slightly lower temperature than beeswax does," he said, placing one on each side of the desk. "And aluminium melts at a _much_ lower temperature than iron does, though fortunately there is an alchemical trick we will be using for that so it does not have to concern us today."

"So… does that mean the pine tar gets paired up with the iron, sir?" Harry checked.

"Correct," Dumbledore informed him. "It adds symmetry to the mixture."

He indicated two sets of flasks connected by tubes, which Harry vaguely recognized to be alembics – one flask that went on the fire, a connecting tube, and the receiving flask which in this case was made with a large top closed by a separate cap. "If you would set them up, Harry, that would be wonderful."

Making sure he was doing the correct thing at each stage, mostly by asking if he was, Harry arranged one alembic so that the flask to go on the burner had the beeswax in and the aluminium was in the other one. That one went on the burner, which Dumbledore asked Harry to light with his own flame, and the beeswax slowly melted before some vapours began to ooze up the flask and down into the chamber with the aluminium.

It was only once Harry had set it up and stepped back that he frowned. "Wouldn't the beeswax catch fire instead, Professor?"

"That would be dreadfully ill-mannered of it," Dumbledore informed him, eyes twinkling.

Harry tried not to giggle, and Dumbledore went on to explain. "In fact, the beeswax has had a little pure spring water added – this inhibits combustion, because of course water puts out fire, and encourages the material to boil instead."

While they were waiting, Harry set up the second alembic – in much the same way, except with pine tar and the iron ingot.

He did ask about how it was that the apparatus could tolerate such heavy things as metal ingots, and was informed that Unbreakable glass had been a tremendous boon to the practice of alchemy.

"You see, if we had to keep stopping to replace our glass, we would never get very good at it," he said, before going back to the cupboard and getting out a small bottle with a stopper.

Harry watched as Dumbledore undid the stopper and shook out half a dozen silvery-blue metal grains into a crucible.

"This is called gallium," Dumbledore told him, giving the crucible to Harry to inspect. "It is a metal with a number of remarkable properties. One of them is that it is quite similar to mercury, or quicksilver as we used to call it, in that it melts at a much lower temperature than one can find in just about any other metal – and another, which makes it particularly useful today, is that if you add a little gallium to a lot of aluminium it spreads through the whole structure."

He chuckled. "Of course, it also _weakens_ the structure, but that is one reason why we will be using iron as it does not have the same effect on iron and that will balance it out. Can you think of why it is we will be using gallium, Harry?"

"Well, if it melts easily, that would be why?" Harry guessed. "Alchemy is about properties, so… it's about adding the property of melting easily, so we don't need _really_ high temperatures."

"That is part of it and, indeed, most of it," Dumbledore told him. "The other reason is because we can _sensitize_ the gallium, and by extension the whole work."

With tweezers, he picked three of the grains out and put them into a second crucible. Each crucible then had a sprinkle of coal dust added, and Dumbledore placed them both onto the table.

"If you would melt one of these, Harry," he asked. "With your breath, if you please."

Harry inhaled, then blew a thin stream of flame at the first crucible. The gallium melted, so fast it was shocking to see metal do that, and went from silvery-blue to silvery-white – while the coal dust burned off.

"Very good," Dumbledore pronounced. "Do you know, we used to do this with quicksilver, but gallium is much safer to use and it causes fewer cases of peculiarity among alchemists. The advance of technology is really quite helpful."

At Dumbledore's direction, Harry took the top off the receiving flask and added the crucible full of gallium to the aluminium. The whole of the metal melted over the next ten to fifteen seconds, becoming a gently sloshing mass of liquid aluminium, and they put it to the side before repeating the process with the other half of their ingredients.

"How do we know about which ingredients do what?" Harry asked, as the pine tar bubbled and smoked.

Dumbledore chuckled. "Well, Harry, quite a lot of that has come from experimentation. The work of an experimental alchemist is attempting to discover the manifold properties of the materials – living and unliving – around us, and then attempting to combine them, and seeing if they work. And, alas, much of what one alchemist discerns may not work for another; my good friend Nicholas Flamel has shown me many things, but not all of them have worked successfully when I have done them."

He spread his hands. "It can be quite frustrating, though it does mean that success is _most_ satisfying."

After a few more minutes, Dumbledore pronounced the iron ready, and Harry melted the other crucible of gallium before adding it to the iron. That metal was affected much more slowly, and Dumbledore said that the addition of the pine tar was helping the gallium to stick to the iron as well as making the iron ready to stick to the aluminium.

Finally, Harry was called upon again to heat both the iron flask and the aluminium flask (which had frozen in the meantime, but a quick jet of flame melted it all again), and the two mixtures were poured together into a single large flask.

Dumbledore examined the result, tilting the flask to make the metal slosh back and forth, then picked up a glass of water from his desk and drew out a thin streamer of liquid into a watery sphere that rested on the tip of his wand.

"_Frigidarium,"_ he said, and the sphere froze. "If you would take that, Harry, and drop it into the metal?"

Harry picked it up between the tips of his talons and did as Dumbledore asked. In a moment the whole of the metal froze solid, forming a silvery blob at the base of the flask, and Dumbledore tapped it a few times.

Watching with interest, Harry saw Dumbledore's wand tip glow a brilliant white as he poked at the metal. Nothing else happened, though, and Dumbledore pronounced himself satisfied.

"Fine work, Harry," he said. "I believe we will have to shrink this for you, until you require it, but you will find that it melts easily – but only to your very own fire breath – and, of course, that it is rather harder than steel for less weight."

He smiled brightly. "It seems like a much safer material to work with, don't you think?"

"It does, Professor," Harry agreed. "Thank you, that's very helpful indeed – and it was very interesting, as well!"

"I am glad to have piqued your interest," Dumbledore told him, but Harry was already raising a paw.

"Only, um… wouldn't it have helped you interest more people in alchemy if you'd done the demonstration for more than just me?"

Dumbledore tapped his chin.

"What an excellent idea," he said. "Do forgive me, Harry, sometimes I get so tremendously excited that I forget the most basic things."

* * *

January rolled over into February, and the storms that occasionally lashed the castle went from being blizzards to hailstorms and rainstorms.

There was another pair of Quidditch games, and unfortunately for everyone involved the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff game ended up scheduled during some of the foulest weather Harry had ever seen. His wings were pressed into service as umbrellas, everyone who could on both sides cast a Bubble-Head Charm to fend off the hail – with some success – and when Harry first caught sight of the Snitch it was being bombarded with hailstones and visibly bouncing around.

After ten minutes Harry thought everyone just wanted the game to be over. After thirty minutes it seemed like they didn't care which side caught the Snitch, just that they wanted _someone_ to catch it, but in the miserable weather that wasn't exactly turning out easy.

Oddly, it was after about thirty minutes that goals started being scored. Harry thought about it a bit, and decided that maybe it was because _at first_ the Chasers had had trouble aiming in the wind and hail, but once they _had_ got used to it they could use the weather to almost sneak up on the Keepers – Ron included – though even then it didn't work very well.

When Cedric eventually caught the Snitch after more than an hour, making the score for the game as a whole two hundred and fifty for Hufflepuff and a hundred and ninety for Gryffindor, he got a very brief cheer from the whole crowd before everyone headed inside again as fast as possible.

* * *

"I really think they should schedule those during the summer," Dean said, casting a drying charm on himself. "That was dreadful."

"Don't Muggle sports games happen in bad weather?" Neville asked. "I'm pretty sure I've heard you talking about how the off season is over the summer."

"Well, yeah, they _do_," Dean agreed. "But there's so many football games they have to be closely spaced or they won't all fit in the year."

"I feel like we've had this conversation before," Harry said.

"Yeah, probably," Dean nodded. "But still… they haven't rescheduled, have they?"

"Maybe it's because they don't have much choice," Hermione pointed out, sitting down next to them with her robes and shoes dry. "If they had a Quidditch game during the run up to OWLs or NEWTs, it'd be too much of a distraction."

"That is a good point," Harry said. "Did your homework go well?"

Hermione didn't answer straight away, instead looking at her friends. "Do you mind if I ask something strange?"

"Go ahead, that's sort of our thing," Dean told her.

"Do I seem like I'm stressed?" Hermione asked. "I suddenly realized I wouldn't be good at telling."

"Well… not any more than usual," Dean decided to say.

Harry hadn't wanted to reply so quickly, because he wanted to think about the answer a bit more.

Hermione was definitely doing more work than any of the rest of them were, and obviously part of that was that she could use her Time-Turner to make _sure_ she had more time to work, but it didn't seem like she was fraying at the edges or anything like that.

Harry knew she'd worked out a complicated schedule for herself, though he didn't know any of the _details_ of that complicated schedule.

"Hasn't Ron got back yet?" she asked. "I wanted to go over that Runes work for Friday."

"He's still in the shower, I think," Harry said. "There was that time he fell off his broom and went Nutkin so he didn't hit the ground hard, but he still got really covered in mud – and even Ginny isn't back yet."

"Even Fred and George, you mean," Dean corrected.

Harry thought about the relative amount of work the various Weasleys would put into keeping clean, and conceded the point.

"How are you supposed to know if you're overworked?" Neville asked.

"You end up sort of feeling like…" Harry began, then paused. "You don't feel like you have _no_ free time, that would be too easy to notice. You feel like you have to ration things closely, and if something runs over you feel sort of angry because it's spoiled your schedule?"

He shrugged a wing. "That's what it felt like for me, when it happened."

* * *

February also brought Valentine's Day, which in 1996 fell right in the middle of the week. That made it a bit difficult for romantic couples to do anything special with the day, and there was a sort of unspoken process where about sixty percent of those who did anything did something on the weekend before Valentine's Day itself and about sixty percent did something on the weekend _after_.

(Harry estimated that about twenty percent of the people who did something did something _both_ weekends. Based off what he had overheard that was usually the result of an inability to schedule a table at Madam Puddifoot's, which was apparently something romantic.)

Personally, and Harry was quite aware he might not be normal, he much preferred the idea of little things, like going for a walk or having dinner somewhere you liked the food. It seemed more sensible to him to just have a nice day out with someone you liked – though he did have to admit that maybe it was more special if you were doing a special 'romantic' sort of thing on (or near) a romantic day with your boyfriend or girlfriend, a bit like how watching _live_ television was somehow more meaningful than watching recorded television even if it was exactly the same bit of TV.

Really, romance seemed terribly complicated. At least people he knew seemed to enjoy it – Harry saw Cedric and Cho coming out of Madam Puddifoot's, and either Cedric had enjoyed it just as much as Cho had or he was _really_ good at looking like he had.

Then there were Su and Sally, who Harry took a photo of on top of Meade Hill at their request. There wasn't really another way to get a good aerial photo like that, not without someone on a broom, and while Harry could have got his broom from Gryffindor Tower if the photo hadn't turned out well (possibly with a summoning charm) the first one that came out was one that both girls liked so there was no need.

As it happened, Harry also saw Hermione and Ron spending the afternoon together. In their case, though, Ron had made a little squirrel-sized hang-glider thing out of paper and Hermione was either running very fast to get Ron up to takeoff speed or just whipping her tail around with Nutkin clinging to the end until he couldn't any more.

There was probably a pun in there about flights of fancy, but Harry abandoned the attempt to make it after a few that didn't sound quite right.

* * *

"One of the reasons why we practice defence spells is so that we can cast them more easily," Cedric said, looking around at the fourth- and fifth-years in the Defence Club.

He paused. "That probably sounded really simplistic."

"Well spotted," Draco drawled.

"It's true, though," Cedric went on. "People find it easier to do things they're used to doing automatically. If you don't believe me, try actually thinking about when to breathe and you'll see how much of your concentration it takes up."

That led to a short pause full of loud breaths of air, and then Ginny groaned.

"Did you _have_ to say that?" she asked.

"It did get the point across," Cedric told her, shrugging. "Anyway. The Patronus is a really good example of that, actually, because it's much harder to cast when you're struggling with a Lethifold or in the presence of a Dementor, but if you're so used to casting it that it doesn't take all that much concentration you're in a great situation."

He looked over at Harry. "You _can_ get that good at the spell, right? You've been casting it longer than I have."

"I think so," Harry replied, taking his wand out. _"Expecto Patronum."_

Ruth emerged from his wand in a blur of silvery light, and Harry watched him for a bit before returning his attention to Cedric.

"That _was_ a lot easier than it started out as," he reported.

"Well, there we go," Cedric said. "I think it'd be a good idea to practice some more, then – and if anyone's still having trouble, we can help them out?"

That sounded like a good idea to Harry, and everyone spread out before getting their wands ready as well.

* * *

A bit like the Animagus transformation, it was interesting to think about what someone's Patronus actually _said_ about them as a person.

From what he'd read, Harry knew that it was one of those weird things where sometimes it said a lot and sometimes it was just an animal the person liked. You could also get a situation where the animal changed, which wasn't like the Animagus transformation at all, though it was common (as far as you could say that for something rare) for a witch or wizard who'd achieved the Animagus transformation to end up with the _same_ animal as their Patronus – even if it had been something else entirely before that had happened.

With that in mind, some of them weren't surprising at all. Neville had a shimmering white big cat which you could almost call a panther if the word panther didn't imply that it was supposed to not be pure white in colour (an interesting philosophical point), while Dean had a whitebird and Ron had a squirrel.

"Wish I could float like he does," Ron muttered, watching his Patronus drifting in circles.

Hermione's one was the surprise among the Animagi, because it was an otter rather than a dinosaur. It was probably something to do with how her Animagus form was a special case, if Harry had to guess, though it could also have to do with how otters were sort of amphibious and lived both on land and in water.

She'd already refused Harry's suggestion to call it Skipper, which was a pity.

"Anyone still need help?" Harry asked, looking around for people who were casting in frustration. A few caught his eye immediately, and after seeing who was going where – Cedric was going to Terry Boot trailed by his should-have-known-it-would-be-a badger, for example – Harry elected to approach Draco.

* * *

"_Expecto Patronum!"_ Draco said, waving his wand with an irritated scowl.

There was a little flicker of white mist, but nothing more than that.

"At first it helps if you're calm," Harry advised. "But the memory has to be a good choice as well. I think…"

"You think what?" Draco asked.

"I think it has something to do with how it's a spell all about positive feelings?" Harry said, sort of thinking out loud.

He paced back and forth a bit. "If you're happy because you won a game of Quidditch, that's good, but if you're happy because you _beat_ someone else? It might not be."

"That sounds infuriating," Draco grumbled.

He looked at Harry. "At least tell me the wand movement and pronunciation and so on are correct?"

"Let's see them again?" Harry requested.

Draco duly did the wand movements and said the incantation, and Harry considered for a moment before pronouncing them to be correct.

Despite having the idea, he didn't pronounce 'them to be correct', because while that was quite a Dumbledore idea he thought maybe Draco wouldn't appreciate the humour.

"You could try thinking about a time you enjoyed yourself with your parents?" he suggested, guessing that that was one of the things that people did with parents, and Draco sighed. Then he raised his wand, closed his eyes, and tried again.

This time, instead of a waft of white mist, there was a rush of silvery light. It jumped out of the tip of the wand, fell to land on an invisible surface at least two feet above the floor, and Harry tried to work out what it was.

It looked like a lizard – maybe an iguana, or something like that – with a thick tail and sprawling legs. Then it spread a frill ruff, silently hissing, and Harry suddenly remembered where he'd read about it before.

"I think that's a frill-necked dragon," he said. "I read about them in a Muggle science book when I was trying to find out about… well… dragons."

"That's what Muggles call a dragon?" Draco asked.

He looked at it, then at Harry, then glanced out the window. Nora unaccountably failed to conveniently fly past, but Draco looked back down at his Patronus. "...not as big as I was expecting."

"It's bigger than Ruth is," Harry pointed out. "I'm not sure why it does the ruff thing, though. Maybe it's like a peacock."

"...hm," Draco mused. "That might make sense. Father has an excellent collection of peacocks."

He waved his wand, dismissing the Patronus, then tried again. This time the lizard appeared straight off, and Draco looked very pleased with himself.

"I used the memory of getting my Patronus working," he explained.

"Nice one," Harry complimented.

Being proud of getting a spell right was just the sort of thing that could fuel a Patronus, and on top of that it reminded you that you _could_ cast the Patronus.

* * *

The only other person who finally got their Patronus going that day was Tanisis, whose silvery mist (which probably would have been quite good at fending off a Dementor, if only for a moment) blossomed suddenly into a broad-winged eagle.

"I used… well, my memory of when I first got my wand," Tanisis said, as her Patronus vanished again.

"Any idea why it was an eagle?" Dean asked. "I kind of like trying to work this stuff out now."

"I _am_ looking forward to being able to fly," Tanisis admitted.

"You mean on a broom?" asked Mary Plassey, one of the other Ravenclaws in the same year as the sphinx.

She looked baffled. "Can't you… already do that?"

"No, it's some of the magic that sphinxes learn," Luna informed her helpfully. "It's something that doesn't go into most reference books because it's cultural and sphinxes are _still_ classified as beasts – I think it's part of a conspiracy to make sure there are no intelligent politicians – but once she's an adult Tanisis will be able to learn a spell which gives her wings."

"...that sounds kind of cool, actually," admitted Harper from Slytherin.

"It's one of the reasons why the Muggle depictions of sphinxes are so mixed up," Hermione informed them. "Muggles didn't know what was going on so they sort of confused things."

"That sounds like them," Blaise said.

* * *

Harry felt quite pleased with how the Defence Club had been going, really. It might have taken a long time to teach people the Patronus but they were getting the hang of it, now, and that was probably going to mean a lot of people did well on their Defence and Charms OWLS – and NEWTs, for that matter, because of all the sixth- and seventh-years who'd learned it.

It wasn't the only lesson Harry could say was going well, either, because to be honest everything seemed to be going along nicely as they moved into March. Arithmancy was a bit of a pain, but it was more remembering _how_ to apply the maths than the maths itself, while in Runes Ron said he'd finished the control system for his rocket and Harry himself was most of the way through working out what size of sword to make. And Harry felt fairly confident about most of the rest of his classes, though he did have to worry a bit about the places in Care of Magical Creatures where he might know more about dragons than the examiners did.

Maybe you could appeal, or something? Harry sort of remembered hearing about that for GCSEs, but perhaps it wasn't the same for OWLs.

And then there was Astronomy.

* * *

"Harry got me some magazines," Ron explained, lighting up his wand and putting the magazine on the crenelation of a tower. "This is really cool."

"Is it from that Muggle space probe?" Terry Boot asked.

"No, this is something else," Ron replied. "It's that Muggle space telescope that's in orbit."

Everyone looked closer, Harry included, and Professor Sinistra gasped.

"Merlin, those are some wonderful pictures of galaxies," she said. "They're as good as you could get through a fine telescope."

She paused, and when she spoke next she sounded a little puzzled. "Shouldn't there be more stars, though?"

"When they did this they actually pointed it somewhere there weren't any stars," Ron replied.

"Is that actually possible?" Ernie said.

He looked up at the cold night sky. "I can see stars in every direction. A lot of them are a bit faint, but in telescopes there's always more."

"No, I mean they aimed it a bit north of Megrez and Alioth, in Ursa Major," Ron explained.

He turned the page to point at a picture of the constellation. "It's a really small area about… an arc minute across?"

"All _those_ are in one little spot?" Gregory asked.

Ron nodded.

"...Muggles are cleverer than I thought," the big Slytherin said. "To point it at the right little spot."

"No, that's what it's like in every direction," Ron told him. "Or they think it is. Every tiny patch of sky is just stuffed full of distant galaxies – they think some of them are more than ten billion light years away."

Everyone was quiet for a bit after that, until Professor Sinistra told them that they should be focusing on Comet Hyakutake and Comet Hale-Bopp. They'd been observing the approach of Hale-Bopp since the start of the year, but the much newer Hyakutake was getting bright enough to notice and it already had a colour – and it was still a few days from going right past Earth.

Apparently if there was bad weather on the 25th of March _everyone_ was invited up to the Astronomy Tower to see it at the absolute brightest it was going to be.

* * *

The following Monday morning, half Harry's concentration was on what it would be like to see such a bright comet. It made it a bit hard to focus on History of Magic, and in Potions, though Professor Snape's comments made it _easier_ to focus so Harry was able to avoid making any actual mistakes with his Erumpet Potion. (Which was good, because an exploding potion was even more distracting than a comet.)

When Defence Against the Dark Arts came around, though, Harry had been expecting that he wouldn't really need to concentrate at all. He'd read the textbook three times by now, and while it hadn't necessarily got more boring (or interesting) on subsequent readings it _had_ given Harry his little side project of re-writing the book to be… well, mostly 'a lot shorter'. It did mean getting rid of the mathematical arguments, but they didn't cover all the situations anyway.

"Good morning, class," Professor Umbridge said, as she arrived into the classroom.

"Good morning, Professor Umbridge," Harry replied, along with everybody else.

There wasn't anything wrong with being polite.

"Today we'll be studying from a new book," Professor Umbridge went on, and Harry's ears perked up with such force that he nearly knocked his own glasses off. They sort of bounced dangerously for a moment, and Harry adjusted them with a paw so they stayed on.

A few hands had already gone up while Harry was doing that, and Professor Umbridge called upon Sally-Anne. "Miss Perks."

"Is this a book we were supposed to get at the start of the year, Professor?" she asked.

"It isn't," Professor Umbridge replied. "Mr. Potter, come up here and collect up enough books from the cupboard for one for each person in the class."

Mystified, Harry did as instructed. The cupboard she directed him to was full of more than two hundred books, all of them the same, and all of them entitled _Dark and Dangerous Creatures_ by someone called Regulus Marius.

As soon as he'd got the books needed, Umbridge told him to pass them out as well. She added that there should be one each, and Harry sort of wondered if maybe the only teaching she'd done before had been for preschool wizards.

If wizards had preschool.

* * *

With the books all passed out, Harry returned to his desk and opened _Dark and Dangerous Creatures_ to see what was in there.

The book had an alphabetical chapter list and included Beasts, Beings and Spirits, but oddly enough it seemed to include most things that were magical and some things that weren't. The list included Dragons, for one, and Acromantula for another, and Hags were listed – but so were Kitsune, and Three Headed Dogs, and Goblins.

House Elves were not included, but Muggles were, and Harry had no idea what _that_ was about. It wasn't as if he thought Professor Umbridge was going to have picked a book he'd _like_, since she really didn't seem to like anyone when you got down to it, but once you understood what Mr. Slinkhard had been doing _his_ book had at least made sense.

Hermione had already put up her hand, and Professor Umbridge simply ignored her. "Today we will be reading from the chapter starting on page forty-seven," she instructed. "Turn to page forty-seven."

Harry duly did so, turning the pages to page forty-seven, and found that it was the chapter on Dragons.

"Mr. Weasley, please read out the chapter," Professor Umbridge added.

"Um… okay?" Ron said. "Uh… dragons are powerful and dangerous creatures."

He glanced over at Harry. "That's right, at least-"

"No commentary, Mr. Weasley," Professor Umbridge said sweetly. "I _do_ hope you can read!"

Hermione's hand was waving back and forth a little now.

Ron went on. "They are reptilian and covered with scaled – with _scales_ that make them highly resistant to magic, and it has long been recognized that they are so wild that they must be kept under control for the good of the magical community."

Someone sniggered. Harry thought it was Anthony, but he wasn't sure.

"Silence in class, please," Professor Umbridge said.

There was a long pause.

"Mr. Weasley, I distinctly remember asking you to read out this chapter," she chided. "Do you have problems with your memory?"

"You said silence in class, Miss," Ron explained, which led to a few more giggles.

Umbridge frowned. "That is not funny, Mr. Weasley. Twenty points from Gryffindor, unless you'd rather have a detention?"

Ron didn't answer, but turned the page. "When fighting a dragon – hang on, it just went straight into how to-"

"No commentary," Professor Umbridge repeated. "Since you can't follow such a simple rule, I'll give the job to someone who can read… Mr. Longbottom, continue from where Mr. Weasley left off."

"When fighting a dragon that has escaped a reserve, it is important to make sure you target the eyes, and to work with other wizards," Neville read. "This is so that you can stun the dragon and have it taken back to the reserve."

More hands were going up now, and Neville kept going. "Dragons cannot read – what!?"

"Mr. Longbottom?" Professor Umbridge asked, sweetly.

"That's just wrong!" Neville said. "Not only does Harry read more than anyone else I know except Hermione, but Nora is _learning_ to read – I've _seen_ her – and she's only about four, so that's normal for humans anyway!"

"Twenty points from Gryffindor, Mr. Longbottom," Umbridge told him. "I asked you to read the book, not comment on it."

She turned her attention to Anthony. "Mr. Goldstein, perhaps you will do better."

* * *

By the end of the lesson, Harry was fairly sure that the author of the textbook had very little idea what they were talking about.

Some of the bits in the chapter were just ignorant in the usual wizards-about-dragons way, like when the author said that dragons were dumb beasts – which was mostly true _at the moment_, but which clearly wasn't true for Nora or indeed for Gary, Ollie or Sally. But then there were the other bits which were wrong in a _different_ way, like talking about how all dragons were greedy and obsessed with treasure.

Harry had never met a dragon that was greedy and obsessed with treasure, and that was because he was the only one he knew who had that sort of interest in treasure and he couldn't really meet _himself_. And the other dragons who lived at Hogwarts had things they liked, but those were just normal possessions rather than anything else.

By the bit where the book was talking about how dragons were irritable and quick to anger, a lot of people were finding it hard not to just break out laughing. Harry actually thought that was some of the better advice in the book, because non-smart dragons were – well – animals and needed to be treated like animals rather than unnecessarily antagonizing them by mistake, but it seemed like everyone else found it very funny… and then the next bit contradicted it completely by saying that dragons were sneaky and prone to infiltrate wizarding society so they could do as much damage as possible, which would be flat-out impossible for any dragon _apart_ from one of the ones at Hogwarts at the moment and so it made it sound like the author knew about Harry, Nora and the others after all.

Finally there was a bit about how the magic that dragons had was graceless and relied solely on brute force, quite unlike the "skilled spellcasting" of wizards.

Harry didn't find that convincing either. He had no idea yet if dragons _like Nora_ could actually cast wizarding magic in a wizarding way, but he didn't think anyone else could possibly know either, and if the author knew about Harry and meant Harry then that didn't really seem fair. He wasn't as good as some of his classmates, or other wizards he knew – like Dumbledore – but Harry was quite sure that he was at least a little above average if his marks were anything to go by.

Professor Umbridge didn't seem pleased with the reception the book had had, and she'd given out point deductions for the entire lesson every time she had to change who was reading the book. By the end of the reading session only Harry and Hermione hadn't had a go, and when she told them to write down how the book was correct in every particular Hermione stood up.

"This book is ridiculous," she said, without preamble. "It says that dragons have to be controlled, but in the section on goblins-"

"Sit down, Miss Granger," Professor Umbridge told her, but Hermione kept talking.

"-that _they_ are evil because they capture and enslave dragons. And in the section on Muggles-"

"Detention," Professor Umbridge snapped. "I would have thought a prefect would know not to interrupt a teacher!"

* * *

Everyone who hadn't been in that Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson was confused at dinner about why the House Point hourglasses for Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had suddenly lost so many points, and Harry and everyone else spent about half their time explaining what had happened.

Then the other half of the time was spent pointing out the places in their textbooks where it really did say those things, and there was very little time left for actually eating.

Maybe there was something in the idea of comets bringing unusual situations after all.

* * *

AN:

The sad thing is that it's a bit of a toss-up whether this or Lockhart's books were the most useless DADA textbooks they've worked from.


	78. Comet 'arry

Towards the end of dinner, there was a loud _bang_ from the top table.

Dumbledore smiled pleasantly at everyone, waving his wand (which was emitting a thin plume of smoke, and which had clearly caused both the loud bang and the smoke ring gently bouncing off the far wall). "Good evening, everyone. I am afraid I must disturb your digestion with a number of notable announcements."

He waved a hand at Professor Umbridge. "Firstly, I must congratulate Professor Umbridge on an excellent piece of work. It is rare indeed that a Professor of any subject can find a book so wonderfully suited to demonstrate that textbooks are written by people who may not be correct, as the _Dark and Dangerous Creatures_ book she has begun handing out is so very wrong on every single detail that every single sentence I have found which happens to be _correct_ is contradicted by another sentence elsewhere in the same book."

Still smiling, Dumbledore began to applaud, and after a few confused seconds most of the rest of the school began to applaud as well.

Professor Umbridge didn't look very pleased by what the headmaster had said. In fact, she looked intensely irritated, which gave Harry the feeling that either Dumbledore didn't really mean it about congratulating her or she was taking it the wrong way.

Or, and this seemed most likely, she really did think that everything in _Dark and Dangerous Creatures_ was correct.

"However," Dumbledore went on, as the somewhat-confused clapping petered out. "I must now give out some points. Doubtless you have all noticed the sad state of the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor hourglasses, and for entirely related reasons I will award one hundred and ninety-five points to Gryffindor for the courage of their convictions, along with two hundred and five points to Ravenclaw for alert and questioning minds."

"That's completely reversed all the points we lost in Defence!" Hermione informed Harry.

"And if I could see Miss Granger once dinner is over," Dumbledore continued. "That is all, thank you, and I do hope you enjoy the unexpected pleasure of a Great Comet tonight."

"He must want to see you about your detention," Dean said. "Maybe your detention will be to watch the comet?"

"Dumbledore does like astronomy," Harry contributed.

"Oh!" Dumbledore said suddenly, standing back up again and causing the renewed hubbub of conversation to die back down. "I had quite forgotten to mention this in any of the last several years, but for those who are in fifth year this year please do consider Alchemy as one of your NEWT subjects. For those who are in sixth year, perhaps we will be able to work something out so you may get some appreciation of this remarkable topic. Thank you."

"I didn't even know you could _do_ Alchemy," Ginny said.

"I didn't know you could do it as a NEWT subject," Fred agreed.

Or possibly didn't agree? It wasn't clear to Harry if Fred was saying the same thing in a different way or a different thing.

"It'd be hard for us not to know you could do Alchemy," George nodded. "On account of how we've been doing self study on something a lot like it."

"Is _that_ how you did some of your sweets?" Ron asked.

He crossed his arms. "That one that turned me into a six foot canary was a mean trick."

"Custard, like canaries, is yellow," George told him.

"And besides, who else are we going to experiment on?" Fred asked.

"Yourselves?" Ron pointed out.

"Wait, hold on," Neville requested. "Did you say canaries is yellow?"

"By Jove, I believe I did," Fred gasped.

"That was very ungrammatical of you," George nodded solemnly.

"But…" Neville began, looking from one twin to the other, then shook his head. "Never mind."

"That's a fine philosophy to life," George told him.

"Anyway, we can't experiment on ourselves," Fred said. "Or not just ourselves, or we might end up with tricks that only work on ourselves."

"We had to ditch the Doppelgänger Dominoes for that very reason," George agreed. "And it's no good trying them on Ginny because she's _way_ more irritable than you."

Ginny looked smug.

"Charlie keeps saying he'll feed us to Nora, and I don't want to test him," Fred added.

"I don't think Nora would eat you," Harry contributed. "She has very good manners and knows humans aren't for eating."

"I said that, and he said she'd never recognize the results as human," Fred winced.

"What about Percy?" Harry asked, interested. "Or Bill?"

"Never provoke a cursebreaker," George advised. "They know curses you don't."

"And Percy would just be… you know… _legal_ at us," Fred shivered.

"We could try Dad," George suddenly realized. "He'd probably enjoy testing some of that stuff."

"So if you're not testing them on one another because you're twins," Harry said, thinking about it, "does that mean that you have to test them on someone who isn't a Weasley?"

Lee Jordan waved his hand.

"That makes sense," Harry decided.

"No it doesn't!" Ron protested. "Why can't you just test them on him, then?"

"It's less funny that way," Fred said.

* * *

The comet that went over that night was spectacular, and Harry had never seen anything quite like it.

It wasn't quite as bright as some of the brightest stars in the sky, at least in terms of magnitude, but it had a blue-green coma that was three times as wide as the full moon and the tail stretched almost halfway across the sky – and it was moving so fast that you could _see_ it, visibly occluding some stars in the time everyone was watching.

It seemed like the whole school was crowded onto the Astronomy Tower, taking advantage of its magical clear sky – in fact, it was so crowded that Harry elected to clamber off the side of the tower, clinging to it instead, so that there was more space for the contingent of centaurs who showed up to join in the sky-watching.

There was no sign of Bane, but both Ronan and Firenze arrived, and Harry overheard a few snatches of Ronan talking to Professor Sinistra about the unexpected nature of the comet as compared to the comparatively well-anticipated Hale-Bopp that would be passing next year.

Apparently an unexpected comet heralded that something unexpected was going to happen, but the problem was that it didn't really give much clarity about _what_ that unexpected thing was going to be.

That was the problem with warnings of unexpected things. You didn't know enough about them to actually be _ready_ for them, but you had just enough warning to feel stupid when it happened.

* * *

Over the next week or so, and almost without discussing it, people stopped going to Defence Against the Dark Arts.

It was strange how it happened, because Harry didn't remember ever discussing it except as something that was already going on. And Professor Umbridge kept teaching, even though there wasn't anyone in the classroom any more.

"I heard that it's because teaching is her job," Neville volunteered. "So she has to keep doing it, even if nobody's listening."

"I'm not sure you can teach if there isn't anyone to be taught," Harry said, frowning.

"Well, maybe it's a bit like with Professor Binns," Neville guessed, as Harry used a ruler to measure his hand.

Harry turned that over as he wrote down the result, though he wasn't quite sure the comparison worked.

"I think I might need to make it a bit long for you, at first," he said. "More of a longsword? Then if you grow it'll turn into an arming sword."

Neville nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense, I've been practicing both. In both hands, even."

That confused Harry for a moment, until he remembered that Neville was going to be using it _with_ a wand some of the time.

"How are you going to make the actual metal?" Neville added. "Shape it, I mean, I know Dumbledore helped you with the iron."

Harry had been thinking about that, and was glad to explain. "I was actually thinking of using Transfiguration, but not for the metal itself – more for a kind of mould? Then I can cast it."

"Wouldn't it end up being, you know, weak if you do that?" Neville asked, then corrected himself. "Oh, yeah, runes."

"I don't actually know if casting it is a problem, with this metal," Harry said. "It's a problem with iron, but this isn't just iron."

"Yeah, good point," Neville nodded.

He frowned. "Do you think that's something they cover in Alchemy?"

"It probably is," Harry agreed. "I can't think of any other subject it would be."

"Pity we can't just look it up in the Silmarillion or something," Neville opined.

He glanced up at where their room was. "It's sort of a pity that Tolkien didn't include how to make things out of mithril. He included everything else."

Harry snorted appreciatively.

* * *

Towards the end of March, a little after Saint Patrick's Day and about a week before the Easter Holidays began, Harry got a letter on Saturday morning which asked him whether he might be able to come down to the Entrance Hall just after lunch.

In what Harry recognized as Dumbledorean style, it went on to say that while it was a little difficult to answer the question while reading the letter no reply was desired, and that Harry could simply show up – or not – as the fancy took him, with a period of arrival between one and one fifteen in the afternoon.

It also asked that Harry bring along any notes he may have made about himself, which was an odd request but one Harry thought he could fulfil.

"What's that about?" Dean asked, then got a look at the letter. "Think it might be something bad?"

"Probably not," Harry replied, inspecting some toast and spreading marmalade on it. Then he lightly torched the marmalade, caramelizing it to produce a delicious smell, and ate it in three bites.

"Don't forget to let us know what happens," Ron requested.

Harry nodded his assent, swallowed, then looked at Hermione. She had two sausages, some scrambled egg, three pieces of toast and two of bread, an orange and some bacon, and was just finishing off some beans.

"Blimey," Neville said, blinking. "I don't think I ever realized how much you eat, before."

"Long day studying," Hermione replied.

"Ah," Neville said, snapping his fingers. "That makes sense."

That was one of those things that a lot of stories about time travel didn't take much notice of. Sometimes someone spent extra time sleeping, but extra time eating was much less common – Harry didn't even think it had been mentioned in Moreta's Ride, though perhaps that was part of why Moreta had been so tired and made mistakes during the events of that book.

Or maybe it was just something that happened, and there was no need to go into detail about it.

* * *

Harry had lunch early, picked up a book just in case (it was _The White Dragon_, which he was going to check in case Ruth's gallivanting around time included mention of Ruth and Jaxom eating when they were timing it) and was down in the entrance hall promptly at one PM.

June was already there, and waved to him, and over the next few minutes Isaac and Conal turned up as well.

"Any idea what's going on?" June asked.

Isaac wrote on his slate with a quick and practised paw, and held it out for them to see.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Harry read out, helpfully.

About a minute before quarter past – at least, according to Harry's occasional _Tempus_ – both Tanisis and Tiobald appeared, hurrying down the stairs with Luna in tow, and then Dumbledore waved at them from the door to the Great Hall.

"I do apologize for arriving a little late," he said. "Though perhaps I should instead congratulate you all for being early, or at least on time. No, it is my pleasure instead to introduce you to someone I do not believe you have met, an old friend of mine who I hope you will all enjoy talking to."

He stepped aside, and another old man – one who seemed not nearly as old as Dumbledore, but still quite elderly – stepped through.

"Good afternoon," he said, with a little bow. "I can't tell you how much I've wanted to meet you all."

"This is a gentleman by the name of Newton Scamander," Dumbledore said, with a little smile. "I believe you may have all read at least some of his book, unless the curriculum has changed since I last saw it."

"The author of _Fantastic Beasts?_" Conal asked.

"I do have that honour, indeed," Mr. Scamander said. "Though I've retired, I'm afraid, so I've not updated it very recently."

"That's good, because I do have a few questions about what's in there," Tanisis informed him.

"My dear girl, so do I," Mr. Scamander replied.

His whole face seemed to light up at the prospect. "There's always more to find out – and when my good friend Albus invited me I couldn't say yes fast enough! Do you know, I consider it a personal failing that I managed to miss the werewolf colony in the Forbidden Forest?"

"Um, actually, Mr. Scamander, these days we've decided warg is better," June told him. "Mostly because werewolf is a confusing word because there's more than one meaning for it."

Mr. Scamander got a spiral-bound notebook out of a pocket in his robes, and a fine golden quill with a sea-green tint at the tip opposite the nib, and began writing furiously. "That's a very good idea."

"I've got a question, actually," Tanisis said. "Why are sphinxes in the book about beasts?"

At that, Mr. Scamander stopped writing for a moment, and sighed.

"You probably remember how it was decided whether certain creatures should be Beings or Beasts," he said, with a surprisingly shy smile. "I know I included that in the book… I've sometimes thought that they were a bit careful with exactly _which_ members of some species they asked."

Dumbledore suggested that they could take the stairs up to the first floor, where there was a spare classroom, and as they did Harry thought about that.

It was something he hadn't thought about before, but now he _was_ thinking about it he could see how it could really impact the definition of Being or Beast. Since it was all about if you _understood_ things, then – well, with how Nora was getting along at the moment then asking her would be enough to qualify dragons (or her sort of dragon) as Beings, but there were probably some humans where if you asked _them_ then you'd end up with humans considered Beasts.

Harry wondered if Mr. Scamander had met Nora and the others yet.

Maybe that was half of why he was here today?

* * *

"Please, call me Newt," Mr. Scamander requested, once they were no longer in the entrance hall. "And – I've always thought that there are a lot of what we call Beasts who are considerably smarter than the label sounds. It's not really right to have one label for all of what are now Beasts."

Isaac scribbled something quickly on his slate, and everyone else waited politely while he did.

"Why is it like that in your book," Newt read, then spread his hands. "To tell the truth, you're right – I could have written the book about creatures that _I_ think should be labelled as Beasts. But then I wouldn't have the opportunity to write about sphinxes and griffins, to give an example of only two."

He made another note. "And then there's that some of the things I've seen – people simply wouldn't believe them. A Thunderbird friend of mine has helped me out by Obliviating thousands of people in New York, after… ah, a mishap," he winced. "And if you told most wizards that they'd say you were making things up."

"Thunderbirds are like phoenixes," Harry said, half thinking out loud. "I've met a phoenix, and I'd believe Fawkes was a Being if he wanted to be."

"Is that why centaurs and selkies are Beasts, still, then?" Luna said, her eyes on Tiobald's signing fingers. "We want to be?"

"Quite," Newt agreed.

"I know some humans who would quite like to be able to ignore politics," Dumbledore mused. "I imagine they would quite enjoy being Beasts."

That gave several people a chuckle, Harry included.

"Do you think any of you would mind if I asked a few questions?" Newt added. "I've been technically retired for a decade and a half, now, but I'm sure nobody would complain if I put together another edition of _Fantastic Beasts_ which included all the recent developments."

"You mean like Nora?" Harry asked.

"I'd be interested in wargs getting their own entry," June contributed.

"That sort of thing, yes," Newt agreed. "And making it _quite_ clear that sphinxes, wargs, griffins and a few others most certainly _can_ use magic themselves."

He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps I should make it a little clearer why it is that many of the Beasts in the book are classified as Beasts. I know some people don't realize the difference between why griffins are considered Beasts and why hippogriffs are, and that's quite a mistake on my part."

"What would happen if a selkie or a centaur wanted to be considered a Being?" Conal said.

"I suspect it depends who is in charge of the country," Newt replied, considering. "Maybe they'd just need to ask, though."

He flourished his quill slightly. "Miss… Sanura, perhaps we can start?"

* * *

Harry thought that the next hour or so was not only really quite interesting, but also was going to help him at least a bit in his Care of Magical Creatures OWL.

Newt was an expert, that much was obvious, and he was an expert not only because he knew so much _about_ magical creatures but because he knew what sort of questions to ask and how to quickly assimilate the information – fast enough to give him the next question to ask, in fact.

Harry had known in a sort of abstract way, and in a technical way, about the way that sphinxes had a strong reaction when someone got their riddles wrong. But even though he'd known Tanisis for years it wasn't until the interview that he'd got a sense of how it _felt –_ how it was sort of like someone hadn't put any effort in at all, and you felt like giving them a smack just for wasting all the attention _you'd_ put into making such a good riddle.

It wasn't something that Tanisis could ignore, but it was something she could _think_ about and get past. It reminded Harry a bit of his hoard thing, really.

* * *

Somewhat to Harry's surprise, by the time the conversations were over it had gone past three in the afternoon.

He'd learned quite a lot that was new about those of his friends who qualified as Beasts, and he was fairly sure that the friends in question had learned a lot about him – he hadn't known for example that Isaac spoke a clicky language from South Africa, one which Newt turned out to be fluent in as a result of spending a year tracking a herd of Erumpents across the Kalahari.

Apparently they were sometimes (and very briefly) preyed on by lions, which reminded Harry of what the Discworld books had said about how predators of Swamp Dragons soon evolved not to be predators of Swamp Dragons, because it was hard to evolve to get better at something if you'd just exploded.

Harry's own talk was interesting as well, in that way where someone asking you about yourself and genuinely interested in the answers was always at least a little engaging. Newt seemed a little disappointed that Harry had no idea how it was that he'd turned into a dragon, but quickly dropped the subject to talk instead about what it was like getting along in the Muggle world on all fours and with wings (instead of as a human who, naturally, was not allowed to use magic).

"Well, I'm not sure how I'd handle that," Newt said eventually, checking back over his notes. "I don't think it makes sense to call you a Beast, Harry, especially because you're the only one – and because you're different enough from all the other dragons that you'd have to be a separate category anyway. Like wargs and werewolves, as a matter of fact."

He nodded in the direction of the Forresters. "And I'm not making _that_ mistake again."

"What about wargs?" Matthew asked, stepping out a little from behind his cousin. "Do we count as Beings or Beasts?"

"I think there is a very good case that could be made for you being _humans_," Newt replied. "It's strange, isn't it? Though I would like to put you in _Fantastic Beasts_, or at least mention you, simply to avoid confusion."

Isaac asked a question in !Kung, and Newt snapped his fingers.

"All wargs are descended from werewolves," he explained. "And werewolves are human, though I did include them in my book."

"I saw that it said you worked at the Werewolf Registry?" Harry said, trying to remember what _Fantastic Beasts_ had mentioned.

"Yes, my idea actually," Newt replied, though he didn't look _particularly_ proud of that fact. "It was supposed to make sure that people who were werewolves didn't end up infecting more people by hiding their condition, but it went badly wrong and got used to put vulnerable people though more stress."

He shook his head. "And it didn't even catch Fenrir Greyback."

"Didn't Professor Lupin stop him?" Tanisis asked, looking over at Harry for confirmation.

"Yes, that's why he had to stop being a teacher," Harry agreed. "He got hurt, and then all of Fenrir's pack decided that meant they were with him now."

"I heard about that," Newt said, then got his notebook out again and wrote something down.

"It's just occurred to me," he explained. "It'd be very hard to test, but perhaps these instincts we've talked about are the result of what someone _thinks_ their instinct should be. Werewolves hear about pack alphas and so they decide that's what matters, Harry here read about dragons hoarding – what do you think, Albus?"

"It seems to make as much sense as anything," Dumbledore said – he'd been sitting at a desk writing for the last hour or so. "Of course, I do find that 'anything' does not always make much sense, so take that with the grain of salt it so justly deserves."

Newt smiled in a familiar sort of way, and closed his notebook. "Well, thank you all for your time, and it was very nice to meet you. If you don't mind, I'll be sending you something at some point in the year to look at and make sure I haven't made any mistakes – that's the revised version of your entries in _Fantastic Beasts_, of course."

Luna raised her hand.

"Are you going to include the Crumple-Horned Snorkack in the next one?" she asked. "They're fascinating creatures."

"I'm afraid that if I did I would get into trouble with the publishers," Newt told her, spreading his hands. "It's called Fantastic _Beasts_, which is a legal term, and no government has yet made a ruling on them – it would be terribly impolite to include them if they turned out next week to actually be worthy of being Beings."

"I'll be sure to let you know the instant that Daddy and I have found one," Luna promised, then tapped her chin in thought. "Or, rather, the instant we've found what political party one supports."

"That would be delightful," Newt told her, quite sincerely.

Harry wasn't entirely sure if creatures like that, or the other ones that Luna had sometimes mentioned, actually existed. It could be a sort of elaborate joke she played on everyone else, because Luna was like that.

He could understand Newt's reaction, though, because if they _did_ turn out to exist then just because they sounded silly was no reason to ignore them. And there were places in the world where no human at all had ever seen, so there must be _lots_ more places that no wizard had ever seen and when you thought about it like that there _could_ be magical creatures that hadn't been discovered.

* * *

It turned out that – unlike the others – Harry's time was still required, as Newt wanted to see and talk to Nora and the other dragons as well. That meant a trip down the stairs and out onto the grass, heading for Hagrid's hut, which was almost entirely surrounded by dragons lounging around in one of the first really _properly_ sunny days of the year.

There were only four dragons, but dragons were big enough to do a lot of surrounding.

"Good afternoon!" Dumbledore called, and four scaly heads came up. Two of them promptly dropped back down again, Ollie and Sally going back to their naps, but Gary rolled over to watch in interest and Nora sprang to her feet before coming eagerly over.

"Good afternoon," she replied. "Who is this?"

"My name is Newt," Newt told her, and Nora leaned closer to give him a sniff.

"You don't smell like a newt," she told him.

"That's because it's short for Newton," Newt said, and Harry blinked.

He was _fairly_ sure he was supposed to be involved in this conversation.

"I thought you could speak dragon because you're a newt, which is a lizard, which is like a dragon," Nora told him. "But you're not?"

"I learned it a long time ago, in a country called Burkina Faso," Newt replied. "It was called French Upper Volta at the time, though."

"...I don't know a lot of those words," Nora admitted.

* * *

If Newt had been taking a lot of notes before, the amount of writing he did about his conversation with Nora – and then other conversations with Gary, Sally and Ollie, who were all interested in speaking to someone new – seemed even larger.

He asked Nora all the details she could remember about having grown up, then asked Hagrid the same questions, and asked Harry to contribute if he could remember anything useful. He knew a lot about dragon biology, he said, but here was brand-new still-forming dragon _culture_, and it was something he wanted to research just to try and capture the sheer novelty of it all.

While he was asking Gary about what he thought of Sally – and getting the slightly abashed answer that she was 'annoying' but that she was also 'nice really' – Nora leaned around to look at the notebook into which Newt was busily scribing.

"That starts with a G," she announced. "That can sound like a guh. And there's an ah after it… oh! Is that the name Gary?"

Gary stopped saying what he'd been saying, curious. "Yes?"

"Remarkable," Newt breathed, then coughed. "Yes, that's right."

Nora looked _very_ pleased with herself, and turned her attention to Harry. "I read something that someone had written down!"

"That's right!" Harry agreed.

He couldn't remember how soon _he'd_ learned to read, but Nora wasn't quite four years old and that seemed to be about the right age. "Can you write your name as well?"

Nora's wings half-flared in excitement, and she swished her tail to brush away some of the fallen petals on a nearby patch of ground.

Bending down, she carefully used a claw to draw a slightly wobbly but quite clear N, then O, then R and finished it with an A.

"Nora!" she said.

"That's very impressive," Newt told her. "Maybe one day _you'll_ write a book about dragons – and I hope I'll be the first to read it."

* * *

It was nearly five when Newt finally declared himself to be enormously satisfied, and he took the time to thank Hagrid for his excellent work in taking care of four young but very well-raised dragons.

Charlie was in Romania at that point, but Hagrid said that he'd pass on Newt's praise to him as well, and then Harry, Newt and Dumbledore headed back up to the castle.

When they were halfway there, and quite a long way away from anyone else (the nearest students were playing a new game Dean had invented, which was sort of like football but with tennis rackets and a quaffle), Newt looked back at Harry and winked.

"I haven't thought of anything to help with your basilisk problem, Albus," he said, so matter-of-factly that it was a few seconds before Harry quite worked out what had been said.

"Thank you for trying, Newt," Dumbledore replied, as Harry fumbled to catch his glasses after they'd gone _poing_ up into the air from surprise. "I will of course be interested in anything you discover."

"Don't worry, Harry," Newt added, looking back with a smile. "I won't be putting Empress into the next edition."

Harry considered that, because he was fairly sure that part of the book said there were no basilisks in Britain and hadn't been for centuries – he'd had a bit of a smile at that bit shortly after discovering Empress.

It was perfectly fine to put things that weren't quite true into a book, though, if there was a good reason for it.

"I hope one day I _can_ come up with something," Newt mused. "Unless Albus does first. It would be nice to be able to record a basilisk sighting, but until then it remains the case that there have been no recorded basilisk sightings in Britain for more than four hundred years."

"Oh, right," Harry said, remembering that that was the exact wording. "Do you think basilisks would count as Beings as well?"

"They just might, though much as with dragons like Nora it will take some work to prove," Newt told him.

"...because if it's just someone like me, or you, who can translate, then it might seem like we're doing the troll thing," Harry realized, thinking about when goblins had taught trolls a few words of English back when the definition of Being had been much more poorly thought out, and how they'd had to see if trolls understood politics and so on by asking them _without_ using a goblin as a translator – as otherwise all you'd get was that the _goblin_ was able to qualify as a Being.

It probably hadn't been _all_ goblins doing it, though, because you wouldn't need many. Just one particularly creative goblin prankster, in fact, taking delight in repeatedly inflicting trolls on the wizards.

There should probably be a word for that.

* * *

When the Easter Holiday came around, everyone had a busy schedule.

Harry did his best to make sure he had some time that wasn't taken up with revision that he could use on reading books instead, and he _also_ made sure to have some time to sort out how to make a sword.

It seemed like casting wasn't a very good idea, because of how hard it was to make things take on _just_ the right shape, but at the same time Harry wasn't sure if it was worth getting a hammer and an anvil and all those bits – and learning how to make swords the old fashioned way, which could take years – if there was a way of doing it a bit quicker with magic helping out, especially since he was a dragon and he probably had some advantages there.

That gave him an idea, and he melted the flask of may-as-well-call-it-mithril with a quick jet of flame before scooping some out. It took a few tries, because it started out fluid, but then it became a sort of play-dough-like consistency which slowly got cooler and harder until it finally became solid – and a little breath of flame heated it up to the play-dough sort of thing again.

Pouring it back into the flask, Harry decided to get some play-dough in Fort William. For practice.

* * *

It was surprisingly hard, Harry discovered, to find out how to properly make something that had only _really_ gone out of fashion a hundred years ago or so.

On the Muggle side of things there were plenty of reference books _about_ swords, which was one thing, but they were usually mostly about how the shape had changed and how thy'd been used and who had used them – all of it useful information, but it left Harry a bit frustrated because what he was really after was the techniques used to _make_ them (and while the books had some details on that as well, it wasn't quite enough to be confident).

Then on the Magical side of things there were books in the Hogwarts Library going back for hundreds of years, but they mostly didn't have a lot to say about making swords. There was a bit about _using_ them, and a whole book about useful enchantments to put on a sword (which Harry decided to take note of for Neville) but nothing really about how to make one properly except 'buy one from a Muggle'.

Based on that, and because he didn't _really_ want to spend years learning how to make a sword, Harry used play-dough (then plasticine, which seemed to be a closer match) to make himself a sort of almost-the-right shape and froze it so Neville could see how it felt. It seemed balanced about right, which gave Harry the conviction he needed to be sure about this, and he melted the almost-mithril before getting to work.

* * *

"That's so weird to watch," Neville said, sitting a good few yards away as Harry worked.

It wasn't the first time he'd said it, either. Harry had been going for about an hour by then.

He blew a little stream of flame onto the metal, heating it up enough that it got a bit more pliable, and ran his claws along what was going to be the blade edge. He'd put a long metal ruler on the stone floor either side of where that was going to be and stuck them down with Sticking Charms, so his claws could run along the ruler on one side and scrape out a straight line, and little curls of alchemical alloy came off like wood shavings.

Those bits cooled off more quickly, and Harry added them back into the blade nearer the centre.

It was sort of blade-heavy at the moment, but Harry had planned for that. One of the things he_ had_ got from his reading about the Muggle middle ages was one of those grinding wheel things you used to sharpen a sword, and Professor McGonagall had been kind enough to not only Transfigure one for him but also put an Unbreakable Charm on it.

That would mean that Harry could grind bits off until it looked right, then either add those bits of metal back onto the blade if he'd overdone it or add them to the pommel until it was properly balanced.

"I've heard of making things by hand, but this is silly," Neville added, and Harry had to snigger a bit as well.

The idea of a Muggle blacksmith – or even a magical one – doing this sort of thing _was_ kind of funny.

"How does that look?" he asked.

Neville stepped a little bit closer, cast a Cooling Charm on himself, then picked up Harry's diagram of what he wanted to make and checked it.

"How long is the bit from the top of the hilt to the pommel?" he asked, and Harry used one of the spare rulers to show him. "Right… and, okay, that looks about right…"

He looked up. "Isn't it going to sag a bit as it cools down?"

"It's already a lot harder to move around than plasticine is," Harry said. "It might a little bit, but we can check how it feels before I actually put the runes on."

"Right," Neville agreed.

He frowned. "Can you cool this down by magic, or something? Isn't there that thing where someone would put a sword in water – quenching, that's it?"

"Good question," Harry agreed.

He thought about it for a moment, gathered up the shavings that hadn't been added back into the blade yet and put them back in the flask, then took a deep breath.

Neville stepped back.

"_Aguamenti!"_ Harry incanted, exhaling sharply, and there was a loud hiss as the water hit the metal and cooled it off all at once.

That had the unfortunate but expected side effect of getting the floor wet.

* * *

Once the floor had been dried off again – it had taken a bit of thought but a Scouring Charm had worked – Harry started doing the grinding part.

That turned out to take a lot of work as well, because a lot of it was about making sure that the sword balanced right – which partly meant measuring to make sure that it would balance in the right place (so it wasn't too heavy on one side or the other) and partly meant giving it to Neville to see if it felt too blade heavy.

Or too blade light. Either could be fixed, but Harry had to know about them first.

Really, this was complicated enough even with an alchemical material that didn't need to be treated carefully to get the right combination of being strong and being tough and all those other things.

* * *

Finally – and after adding a bit more of the mithril scrapings to the guard, and the rest to the grip to give some extra roughness to hold on to – it was finished, or finished as a piece of metal anyway.

The sun was setting, and dinner was going to start soon, but Harry decided that he should at least mark out the runes now even if he wasn't going to etch them just yet. Professor Babbling had said that putting one meaning on one side and the other meaning on the other side would work best, when Harry asked, and she also said that she was very impressed that Harry and Ron were actually _making_ their projects.

It was at about that point that Harry had been reminded how all they really _needed_ to do for the exam was a write up of a project _proposal_. He'd been entirely too carried away, and so had Ron, but at this point that didn't matter very much.

In any case, the first step was to mark out the runes in something that could make marks on the object you were using (Harry used a crayon) and then the second step was to mark the key points of each rune with a spell called – with admirable simplicity – the Rune-Marking Spell. Unlike the first step markings these had to be exactly placed in relation to one another, or as close as possible, and Harry ended up spending almost an hour getting each little glowing red dot in exactly the right place.

Then he went to have dinner, because this making-swords thing could leave you hungry.

* * *

AN:

Harry isn't actually trained at this, he's making some of it up as he goes along. If you know how swords work then you probably know more than Harry does.


	79. Career Dragon

Etching the runes took a bit longer, but fortunately wasn't quite as hard as putting the nodes in place had been.

That was the whole point of the nodes in the spell, really, they sort of protected the rest of whatever it was you were working on relative to where the nodes were, and you could use that to help a lot in getting the positions of the runes just right – because you _couldn't_ go too far out of the way.

The fact that the rune bit wasn't as well polished – and so was a little bit dull – actually helped with making them more visible, because it meant they showed up as dark on a shiny background. Harry was quite pleased with how it looked, really, though of course that wasn't the point.

The point was at the end furthest from the hilt.

Finally, after everything else, Harry carefully cast the Unbreakable Charm on the result. That would make sure that it didn't get damaged, which would be a shame after so much work, and Harry wasn't sure if the iron-aluminium alloy he was using could rust but it seemed a simple enough precaution.

* * *

It was late enough that Harry was quite glad the curfew wasn't as much of an issue during the holidays – otherwise he'd have to take points off himself – but Neville was one of the ones who was still up, working with Hermione on some Potions revision to make sure he'd got the effects of obscure potions like the Polyjuice just right.

"...at least if the Animagus potion comes up I can describe that one," Neville consoled himself.

"I doubt it will, it's not in any of the textbooks," Hermione said. "They might have a 'describe a potion' question, though."

She looked around as Harry approached. "Oh, there you are, Harry – did it go well?"

By way of reply, Harry opened up his wing and took the sword out from where he'd been carrying it.

It had given him a bit of trouble working out how to _carry_ the thing, because it was quite sharp and he hadn't remembered to make sure there was a scabbard, but fortunately pressing it against his body with his wing had worked fine (and been less likely for him to accidentally bite his OWL Runes project in half).

He put it on the table as Neville cleared away the Potions notes, and Hermione touched it gingerly before picking it up.

"Whoof," she said, with a sharp breath. "These are heavy, aren't they?"

"It is made of metal," Harry pointed out defensively. "It's not as heavy as you'd think."

Neville took it from her, carefully rolled his wrist around a bit to see what it felt like, and frowned. "It's not as heavy as all that. It's, what, a pound and a half?"

"There's no way that's less than a kilogram," Hermione replied. "Hold on, I think there's some scales in the bathroom."

She went off to get them, and Harry noticed that most of the people who were still up this late were watching them.

"Did you make that, Harry?" Sir Nicholas asked, drifting closer. "I must say, that takes me back."

"Or your neck," Lee Jordan called.

Sir Nicholas gave Lee an _amazingly_ withering look, then returned his attention to Neville. "If you could hold it out, please?"

Neville did so, his elbow by his side, and Sir Nicholas inspected it closely.

"Hmm," he said, critically. "It's quite good for a first effort, I should say. Is it all one piece of metal?"

"That's right," Harry confirmed.

"It probably shouldn't have been," Sir Nicholas informed him. "And the edge is quite uneven, and I'm not sure about the extent of the fuller…"

He glanced at Harry, who was feeling quite defensive, and clarified. "Don't forget, I've seen these from people who did it their whole lives. Yes, I'd say that overall this is quite a good first piece of work, though you could definitely do better."

As Sir Nicholas floated back a bit, Neville tried a flourish. The sword spun through a complete circle with impressive fluidity, and even Neville himself looked a bit surprised at how well it had gone.

"I've got the scales," Hermione told them, returning. "Let's see how much it weighs."

She put them down, and Neville put the results of Harry's work on the top. The dial spun around to rest on one point five kilograms, or three pounds, and Hermione looked pleased.

Neville, on the other hand, looked mulish. "That's heavier than it felt."

"Has anyone got a bottle of water?" Hermione asked.

* * *

Someone did, indeed, have a bottle of water – specifically one they'd brought from the Muggle world, which was plastic and held about half a litre of water.

Testing with that meant that they had something which even Harry himself had to admit was very strange and not something he'd been aiming for (though it _was_ very neat) – which was that, _to Neville_, the sword weighed about as much as a one-pound bottle of water instead of the weight it was to everyone else.

"I wonder if it's because it's called _Panthera_," Hermione said. "And made for Neville, I mean, and it fits with his Animagus form."

"Does this mean I need to make another one called _Raptor?_" Harry asked.

Hermione looked conflicted. "Well… I don't think you _need_ to, but it would be interesting?"

"This does mean that it's a proper magic sword," Neville pointed out, sounding quite pleased with that. "This is great, Harry, thanks!"

Harry smiled at that.

He felt quite vindicated, really.

* * *

On the last of his trips to Fort William before the resumption of term – and quite possibly the last before the exams, depending on how busy it would be – Harry, naturally, went to see what new books had come in in the book shop.

There were quite a few that were interesting, like a new Dragaera book and another sequel to the book series about the intelligent moon-spaceship _Dahak – _as well as a book with the encouraging name of _Dragonmage of Mystara_.

Most surprising, though, was actually a new arrival in the _library_ which was a book Harry had somehow missed when it came out. It was a new book by the same author as the one behind the _Honor Harrington_ and _Dahak_ books, and it was set in a sort of fantasy world which (from what Harry read when he had a look) felt a lot like a Dungeons and Dragons sort of world, only a bit more… real, somehow.

It was also called _Oath of Swords_ and had a main character with a truly enormous sword, which was sort of amusing with what Harry had spent his time on recently.

* * *

When the new term started, it was all OWL related stuff all the time.

Harry had had a discussion with Draco before about what to have the Defence Club do, and it was now in a schedule where there was one session a week for each age group focused on 'theory' magic – which meant discussing the important bits from several chapters of the Practical Defensive Magic books that Remus had pointed him at – and one session a week focused on 'practical' magic, which was practicing things that were likely to come up on the OWLs.

As Draco pointed out, it wasn't as if people didn't _have_ the time to read the books. Everyone had those strange holes in their schedules which had helpfully been labelled with 'DADA', just in case they needed a specific time to do their reading – and the Practical Defensive Magic books were a lot easier to read and absorb than either of their official Defence textbooks had been this year.

"Although, then again, so would a record of seventy-five years of the proceedings of the Muggle Parliament," Draco had added, and Harry had to agree.

He'd heard they sometimes got _excited _in Parliament.

That was only the first of the things that weren't strictly related to a school subject (or, sort of?) that Harry had to contend with, though. The start of the Summer Term meant a meeting with Professor McGonagall about careers, and in Harry's case his meeting was at half past three on Monday afternoon.

That was during the Defence Against the Dark Arts time slot, so at least Harry could console himself that he wasn't missing anything he didn't want to miss.

Even though there'd been careers leaflets and stuff all over the place during the Easter Holiday, Harry was quite unsure what he wanted to do with his life after Hogwarts. Some of the leaflets looked sort of interesting, like the one about curse breaking, but Harry couldn't quite shake the idea that it was a lot like what Bilbo had been hired to do in _The Hobbit_ and as a dragon he felt like he should probably overall come down on the side of the dragon on that one.

He wasn't sure, though. Maybe it would be okay because whoever had lived there had died a long time ago, but… it was one of those funny things, anyway.

Thinking about working for Gringotts did give him the idea of working there as a _guard_, but really he wasn't sure he was intimidating enough compared to other dragons. Though come to think of it Nora wasn't very intimidating compared to other dragons.

It'd make a good job for Empress, though, because anyone who tried to get past her would probably end up petrified?

Harry shook those thoughts off as he knocked on Professor McGonagall's door, then opened it at her invitation and headed inside.

"Mr. Potter," she greeted him, and Harry had to quickly suppress a giggle.

It wasn't anything about Professor McGonagall _herself_ that was funny – in fact, she was entirely serious and proper. But there was a pile of pamphlets on her desk two feet high, and it was the way that she was next to the pamphlets which made it all seem quite thoroughly silly.

"Please, take a seat," Professor McGonagall added, and Harry duly did so. "Have you given much thought about what to do after Hogwarts?"

"Well…" Harry began, trying to combine his various thoughts into some kind of order. "A lot of the dragons in the books I read seem to have their job just be, well, being a dragon, but that doesn't make much sense."

"Would that it were so," Professor McGonagall noted, with a little smile.

Harry smiled back, feeling a bit more confident about the meeting, and went on. "And I had some ideas about using the things that I'm good at, as a dragon – things like Quidditch for how good I am at flying, or curse breaking because I'm magic resistant, or talking to Muggles because I look more normal to them than most wizards."

Professor McGonagall nodded along, extracting some pamphlets, and showed them to him.

Harry would probably be able to get a position in any Quidditch team, because of his undeniable Seeker skill, though she did point out that his career might not last very long if he was catching the Snitch in ten minutes in every game. Curse breaking was a difficult and somewhat dangerous job, and required good NEWTs in Charms, Transfiguration, Arithmancy and Defence Against the Dark Arts with a preference for applicants who also had Runes to at least OWL level and a History of Magic NEWT.

Muggle Relations, on the other paw, was something that (technically speaking) Harry was not on track for. It required fewer qualifications but _did_ ask for both History of Magic and Muggle Studies, and Harry hadn't done Muggle Studies at OWL, but Professor McGonagall did mention that as a Muggle-Raised student he could probably start straight off doing Muggle Studies at NEWT if that was really his interest.

Then she put those pamphlets down, and fixed Harry with a look.

"I think there is an interesting question to ask, Mr. Potter," she said. "We have talked so far about what you would be good at because of your physical peculiarities, but what do you think you would _enjoy_ doing?"

Harry had to turn that one over for a bit, thinking about it.

"I quite like the Defence club-" he began, but then the door opened.

"Excuse me, Professor Umbridge," Professor McGonagall said, in a voice which had dropped forty degrees Celsius since her last sentence. "I was in the middle of a discussion with Mr. Potter."

"That's why I'm here," Professor Umbridge replied, sweetly. "Since I seem to have _so much free time_ at the moment, I though I'd pop in and see how Mr. Potter is getting on!"

She smiled, in a way which seemed distinctly unpleasant. "Just pretend I'm not here."

"I would rather not have to," Professor McGonagall replied.

Professor Umbridge more-or-less ignored that and sat down in one of the other chairs, and Professor McGonagall seemed to be debating something with herself.

"You were saying, Mr. Potter?" she asked, eventually.

Professor Umbridge started writing, and Harry's ears flicked slightly before he tried his best to ignore the other Professor in favour of his Head of House.

"Well, I've quite liked teaching in the Defence Club," he resumed, and there was a faint _snap_ sound from behind him. "And depending on how well my OWLs go, maybe teaching Defence would be a good thing to do?"

"That is a ridiculous idea," Umbridge said.

Harry looked back at her, and saw to his surprise that both her hands had pink ink on them.

Her quill appeared to have broken in half.

"On the contrary, Professor Umbridge," Professor McGonagall replied. "Mr. Potter is a diligent student with very good marks, particularly in Defence-"

"The school board would not stand for it!" Umbridge insisted. "Hiring a Beast would be – it would be-!"

"You appear to have forgotten, Professor Umbridge," Professor McGonagall replied, as Harry looked back and forth between them like it was a game of tennis, "that one of the recent Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers this school has had – and I would say perhaps the best – was Remus Lupin, who-"

"That just shows-" Umbridge tried again.

"Excuse me?" Harry asked, holding up his paw. "I had some questions to ask about the idea of teaching Defence."

Umbridge looked as though something about the situation simply did not fit with her expectations, and Harry took the opportunity to keep going. "It's because I couldn't really go _straight_ into teaching Defence, or I don't think so. So I was wondering what would be a good short career before that."

"An excellent question, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said, apparently deciding to just keep going as if the interruption hadn't happened. "There are certainly several options. You could, for example, join the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, which does require a Care of Magical Creatures NEWT."

She pulled that pamphlet from the pile, then continued by displaying two more. "Or there is the career as an Auror, one which would require a minimum of five NEWTs at Exceeds Expectations or above, and – well, most Ministry jobs would serve you quite well, I think. There is also the option of simply taking a sabbatical and developing your own skills privately, which would be more in the nature of further study than anything."

* * *

As Harry left the meeting a few minutes later, still without a certain idea for what to do after school but with a better idea about what NEWTs to try and do, he overheard Professor McGonagall say that she was _quite_ sure that Professor Umbridge should be back in class teaching it.

There was still nobody _in_ her class, but – as they'd already been told, at dinner by Dumbledore in fact, the absence of students actually _present_ at a class did not remove it from the timetable.

* * *

"How did it go?" Ron asked, as Harry rejoined his friends in the Common Room.

"It was pretty useful," Harry summarized.

He picked up his own copy of the second _Practical Defensive Magic_ book, which he'd already read but was reading again, and paused before opening it. "Well… I didn't really decide on a career, but I've got more idea about it?"

"I think that's the most they can really expect, at this point," Dean shrugged. "In the Muggle world a lot of people don't actually get a normal job until, what, four or five years after leaving school? Because they go and get degrees from university first, but that's not something wizards do."

"Blimey, four _more_ years of learning stuff," Ron said.

"What sort of thing are you thinking about, then?" Neville asked.

"Mostly things that would help with, well, talking to people and teaching?" Harry said, wondering how to summarize it.

In hindsight, as soon as he said it he was pretty sure he had to rephrase it. It didn't apply to everything.

"I had some ideas about things like cursebreaking, or Ministry work where I'd be helping people out," he resumed. "So either getting better at Defence Against the Dark Arts, or getting better at making sure I can explain things to people properly, because I feel like one of the things I really want to do is teach Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"Oh!" Hermione said, looking up from her own copy. "That's a lot like what I was planning on doing… well, sort of?"

She looked slightly embarrassed. "I like the idea of teaching as well. It's been interesting, hasn't it?"

"Well, nobody's fallen asleep in the Defence Club, so you're both better than at least one teacher on staff," Neville said.

"Two," Dean corrected. "You don't do Divination, and… yeah."

"Are you going to be okay in the OWLs?" Harry asked, suddenly worried.

"Oh, we do _learn_ stuff," Dean assured him. "The textbooks are good, and she's really focused on how to do the practical stuff – it's just that you're never sure if she can actually _do_ it, because she's predicted my death about a hundred and fifty times so far."

"I think I'd be a bit worried about that," Ron said.

"Nah, I worked it out," Dean explained. "She never gives a time. I just look both ways when crossing the road and that seems to sort it out."

Harry had to hold in a chuckle.

"Though I sort of think I should have done Muggle Studies," Dean added. "I had the idea that maybe I should go into the Ministry, as a career, and be a Muggle Expert."

"Which is based _entirely_ on what you know because you're Muggleborn," Neville said out loud, following along.

"Or possibly half-blood," Dean corrected. "We don't actually know. But yeah, I could correct the textbooks on some of this stuff."

"It's about grandparents, so it's sort of funny that it's just Muggleborn, Half Blood and Pure Blood, not… you know, quarter blood," Ron mused.

Dean snorted. "In the eighteenth century they came up with all sorts of stupid words for people who were mostly black or mostly not black, so it could be a lot worse."

"How stupid are we talking?" Harry said.

"Hexadecaroon was the silliest," Dean supplied. "Anyway, you're meant to have a Muggle Studies OWL to work with Muggles, officially, but they don't really bother checking that as long as you're actually knowledgeable about this."

"Maybe that's because the people who do the actual work in the department have to know?" Ron suggested. "So the people who'd be deciding if you're worth hiring would know that people who grew up Muggle have a pretty good idea."

"Probably," Dean shrugged. "There were some other things, though, like the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Or being an Unspeakable, though I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about that."

Harry gave Dean a little bit of applause for that one.

He'd heard of the Unspeakables before, in a magical detective novel – they were sort of the researchers of the Ministry, though they also handled things that had to be kept secret in general.

Dean would probably fit in quite well, in some ways at least.

"What about you, Nev?" Ron asked. "I'm going to guess it involves Herbology."

"Well… yeah," Neville agreed.

There were a few seconds of silence.

"Nothing else to say?" Dean checked.

"I know what I'm good at," Neville said. "And Herbologists are often in demand."

"I'm kind of interested in what Ron's going to do," Harry said. "I know you're interested in going to space…"

"Yep," Ron agreed. "And I'm kind of interested in Quidditch. Apart from that… well, not really sure, to be honest, but isn't that enough to be going on with?"

"I'd say a job in your dad's department in the Ministry would be a good idea," Harry mused. "Or you could work on making Muggle stuff work for Wizards, or the closest thing."

"That's a good point," Ron admitted. "A lot of it works without needing anything done to it, but you still need stuff like electrical power and for some reason televisions don't work."

"There you go, then," Harry said. "Admittedly it's one of those things that's either a hobby or an independent business, so you might have to set stuff up first."

"I'm going to end up with four or five side jobs and no main job, aren't I?" Ron asked, sniggering. "Well, if the worst comes to it I can just live in a tree or something."

"It'd be a good way to hide from wizards," Harry contributed.

* * *

As the OWLs got closer and closer, Harry's Prefect duties got a bit different.

He still had to patrol, though that was a lot easier with the Marauder's Map – but he also had to make sure that people weren't making too much noise or disturbing fifth- and seventh-years who were studying for their increasingly imminent exams.

Then he had to make sure that people who _were_ fifth- and seventh-years who were getting a bit stressed out knew they could go to him to talk things out and let off a bit of stress. And, just incidentally, make sure to keep control of what was a surprisingly persistent trade in ways to magically improve concentration or things like that.

At least Fred, George and Lee were too busy with their own peculiar brand of revision to try selling Marauder's Memory Maker or something like that.

Or maybe it was just something Sirius had told them. He'd confided in Harry that during his own exams he'd actually managed to get hold of a tiny pinch of powdered dragon claw, spent three hours in History of Magic writing a tremendously detailed answer to the first question, and ended up with a terribly poor mark.

That led to Harry getting out his copy of the first Red Dwarf book and reading out Rimmer's revision timetable, and _that_ led in turn to Harry reading it out three more times – once in each of the three Defence Club practical sessions over the course of the week – and it gave everyone a much-needed laugh, released a lot of tension, and generally helped out no end.

* * *

Dumbledore stood up a week or so before the start of the OWLs to tell everyone that answers which were factually correct were extremely unlikely to result in poor marks in the OWLs and NEWTs, and to add that he would personally be looking over the non-OWL papers of anyone who felt themselves to have got poor marks as a result of the teacher incorrectly marking correct answers as incorrect.

It took Harry a moment to work that one out, but he was fairly sure he'd got the meaning right.

* * *

All of a sudden, the OWL and NEWT exams were upon them.

The Fifth- and Seventh-years had no lessons that day, obviously, and instead they all went into the Great Hall to take a seat at a set of eighty individual tables spread throughout the room. There was parchment, a quill (the now-familiar anti-cheating quill), ink, and an exam paper on each table, along with spares of all four at the top table, and Harry wondered briefly whether they'd remembered to ask about typewriters for next year.

Could you have an anti-cheating typewriter?

* * *

The theory exam for Charms had more than two dozen questions, and only two hours to do it in, and while it was more of an Arithmancy problem than a Charms problem Harry could certainly work out that that meant he should only spend about four minutes on each question.

That helped him out a lot in telling how much writing he should actually _do_ – it would have been silly for him to spend twenty minutes on the first question, that sort of thing – and as he was writing Harry hoped that his friends had made the same realization.

Then after lunch came the Charms Practical, which was done in alphabetical order. That meant Hermione went first out of his friends, then Neville, and Harry was third.

"I'd say break a leg, mate, but I don't think you can," Dean said, doing his best to lighten the mood, and Harry quickly smiled his appreciation before following Sally-Anne Perks and the Patil twins into the Great Hall.

* * *

When he left, Harry thought it had gone quite well overall.

Some of the things he'd been asked to do involved the exact spell, like turning a rat orange, while other things (like making a wine glass spin around in the air and do cartwheels) were technically open for whatever spell could achieve the goal that the examiner asked for.

When asked to heat up a dinner plate, Harry simply couldn't resist showing off _slightly_ and casting the bluebell flames spell with his breath instead of his wand – or using a simpler Heating Charm – but the examiner (a wizened wizard by the name of Professor Tofty) was quite impressed and told Harry that it was a creative use for the spell, executed well.

He also got a chance to demonstrate the first spell he'd really invented, the _Xenographica_ spell, by making an exact duplicate of Professor Tofty's notes in Latvian at the examiner's request. Since Professor Tofty _spoke_ Latvian, he was able to check the translation, and he told Harry with a smile that it was quite grammatically correct.

Hopefully it would make up for how he'd mixed up the Silencing Charm (_Silencio_) and the countercharm for the _Sonorus_ charm (which was _Quietus_) and so hadn't actually silenced the target at first. Professor Tofty had simply smiled understandingly and told him to try again, which was nice, but Harry had the feeling he was going to lose some marks on that one.

* * *

"Okay, so, first thing," Ron said, when he arrived in the Common Room after _his_ Charms. "I don't want to hear anything else about Charms, all right? Not until August. Or ideally September."

"But I was going to ask how you got on with that question about the Disillusionment Charm," Hermione protested.

"Look at it this way, Hermione," Ron replied. "If we spend half the time going over the Charms exam, I'm going to end up stressed. And because I'm stressed, I'm going to end up making a mistake on the Transfiguration paper because we won't have as much time revising _that_."

He glanced at Neville, Dean and Harry, and Harry nodded his agreement.

"Too right," Dean agreed. "If we're going to spend hours fretting about exams let's at least have it be the exams we can still make a difference in!"

"And if it's not Transfiguration, it should at least be Herbology," Neville suggested, and Ron rolled his eyes.

"All right, mate, but you know all that stuff already," he said. "Hold on, what's the timetable again?"

"Transfiguration tomorrow, Herbology on Wednesday, then Defence on Thursday," Harry rattled off. "Runes is Friday, so that's a day off for some of us, then next week it's… um, Potions, Care of Magical Creatures… Astronomy is Wednesday and they've stacked Divination and Arithmancy on top of one another."

"I think that's going to be my favourite day this fortnight that doesn't begin with S," Ron said firmly. "Nothing but Astronomy."

"You say that, but the practical's going to include midnight," Dean pointed out. "History of Magic on Thursday afternoon, remember."

"And then Muggle Studies to finish out the week," Neville completed. "Are you going to be okay with Wednesday, Hermione? That's three subjects and two of them are on top of one another."

"I'll find the time," Hermione said. "I am looking forward to having a normal schedule though."

"Normal, she says," Neville sniggered.

* * *

AN:

And moving right on to GCSEs. Or OWLs, if you're magic.

For the record, Harry's sword for Neville was not made in the right way – he was sort of improvising some of it – and as a sword it leaves something to be desired.

As a _magic_ sword, however, it's definitely a magic sword.


	80. Ordinary Wizarding Dragon

There was a strange sort of tradeoff to finally doing OWLs.

Harry thought it was because it felt quite good to _finish_ an exam, and know that that exam was over and done with and you didn't have to worry about making mistakes in it any more, but if you thought about how important it was _before_ or even _during_ the exam you were more likely to get stressed out.

He did his best to just answer each question in the twenty-four-question Transfiguration theory exam, going down the list one at a time and spending no more than five minutes on each, and had a little trouble remembering the incantation of some of the standard spells.

Somehow in all the revision he'd done Harry had managed to miss out on revising the spell where you turned a mouse into a snuffbox, and the best he could do was to sort of guess based on other Transfiguration spells that it was 'snufflifors'. That might not be right, but it was better to guess than have no idea at all, and Harry resisted the urge to footnote it with an "I think".

If it _was_ right, it was probably better to just leave it as it was, while if it was wrong it was wrong.

* * *

The Transfiguration Practical, on the other paw, didn't have the same problems.

Harry found himself quite proficient at Transfiguring what Professor Marchbanks wanted Transfigured, including when he was given a ferret and asked to Transfigure it into a teapot – which was a reversal of the usual trick of Transfiguring a teapot into a ferret, and took a moment for Harry to get correct (though, fortunately, he did get it on the first try). Then there was some Vanishing (which went well) and some Conjuring (which went well as well), and when Harry left the Practical he had a good feeling about his results.

* * *

In the Common Room that evening Hermione said that she'd discovered her examiner – one Professor Antimony – hadn't heard of dromaeosaurs.

"Was it easy or hard to explain?" Ron asked.

"Well, I had an example to point to," Hermione replied, thumbing through _One Thousand Magical Herbs And Fungi_. "It was just a bit hard to explain the features because I had the example, _or_ I could talk."

"That's something I hadn't thought about," Dean said.

"Well, I think technically you're a dinosaur as well," Hermione frowned, thinking about it. "I _think_ that's how it works? Just because Neville's a cat doesn't mean he's not a mammal any more."

"I was not ready for where this conversation went," Ron admitted. "Hey, Nev, what stuff do we need to really get in our heads for tomorrow?"

"Well, there's a _lot_ to remember," Neville said. "Just, um… Professor Sprout said once that it's better to be careful than quick, in Herbology, most of the time. So in the practical don't forget about that."

"Did the examiners like the Animagus stuff?" Harry asked.

"Professor Marchbanks said she'd heard from my gran about Lapcat," Neville told him.

He smiled a bit shyly. "I didn't know she said nice things about me to other people when I'm not there. I hoped, but… you know."

"I can guess, maybe?" Harry said, thinking about it. "Wonder what it will mean for your marks."

"I'm actually _kind_ of hoping I do awfully in one subject," Neville told him. "Maybe that'll show that my gran knowing Professor Marchbanks doesn't mean I get let off easily."

Harry thought about that a bit.

"I don't think your gran would let Professor Marchbanks off if she did that," he decided. "I think you'll probably be okay."

"I'm worried about people thinking it, though," Neville said.

"How do you tell the difference between Devil's Snare and a Flitterbloom again?" Ron checked. "Without, you know, it trying to kill you."

"Flitterblooms are more tolerant of bright light," Neville answered. "And fire – or, rather, they can't make a getaway attempt like Snare can."

* * *

Wednesday saw their Herbology exam, which as far as Harry was concerned went 'basically okay' (Dean overreacted a bit when a liverwort pot fell on him, but Professor Tofty assured him that they had plenty more liverwort and it wasn't an intrinsically magical plant anyway) and then on Thursday it was time for the exam that Harry had really been worried about – the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam.

It wasn't that Harry was worried about his own marks, because he thought he had a pretty good grasp on the subject – both in the theory paper in the morning, and in the practicals which were to come in the afternoon. Instead, Harry felt a vague sense of partial responsibility for _everyone's_ marks in this exam, and hoped that as many people as possible got marks that were as high as possible.

Though, in a funny sort of way, he thought he'd be wanting that anyway.

The theory paper wasn't too bad, really. There were some questions on it which were longer than on the other ones so far, not _too_ long – there were ten normal questions and one miniature essay, so it was about ten minutes each – but it was different, and unlike in the previous papers Harry was quite sure about the answer to every single one.

The positive and negative sides of the Stunning spell, along with the way to use it? That was something Harry could answer quite happily.

Examples of three protective jinxes and the best way to combine them? Harry listed off the Anti-Apparition Jinx and the Anti-Disapparition Jinx, and how you could combine them to make sure people could only enter but not leave or only leave but not enter – and only in a specific room, for example – and then the Anti-Intruder Jinx, which made it much harder to get into the protected area in the first place.

How to repel a Dementor? Harry listed off not just the Patronus Charm but also that you could avoid some of the effects by focusing on something that was a true but not happy thought, citing Sirius Black and his innocence as an example from personal knowledge.

Harry wrote more for the Defence OWL paper than for any of the other ones so far, and felt vaguely disappointed when he had to conclude his miniature essay without quite touching on all the points he'd wanted to. He did, however, manage to mention the argument from Slinkhard, though nothing from _Dark and Dangerous Creatures_ had been really worth including.

Maybe this was how Hermione felt all the time. If it was, he could see why she liked it.

* * *

That afternoon, Harry ended up with Professor Tofty again in the examination hall.

"I've heard you have something of a knack for Defence, Mr. Potter," the Professor said, adjusting a pair of the glasses Harry thought were called pince-nez. "That it's you we have to blame for all the Patronuses turning up!"

"I did teach people that," Harry agreed. "I know it's kind of a hard spell, but I thought it was worth trying."

"It does have a reputation, indeed," Professor Tofty nodded a few times. "But you've clearly got a talent for teaching it, with how many people you've taught successfully!"

There was a soft flare of white light across the examination room, and Harry looked around to see that Draco had summoned his own Patronus for Professor Antimony.

"But we'll move on to that later," Professor Tofty added, and checked a piece of parchment. "Let's see… could you start with a shield charm?"

Harry duly cast the _Protego_ charm, then demonstrated the Disarming Charm and the Stunning Charm as well. That was followed in turn by some hexes and in a few cases curses – including the Body-Bind curse – though Harry simply had to cast them at an object Professor Tofty had conjured for the purpose instead of actually using them on a person.

Counter-jinxes came next, just a few to make sure he knew what he was doing, and then it was on to spells for specific situations – like the_ Riddikulus_ spell to banish a Boggart, or the Placement Charm for defending oneself from Kelpies.

Though that was a bit of an odd one because you also needed the bridle. Maybe you could Conjure one if you needed it?

Harry was just wondering if maybe he should switch to using his breath or his tail when Professor Tofty put the parchment down.

"Very good," he pronounced. "I'm not really _supposed_ to tell you how you're doing before you get your marks, but I've run out of questions and I haven't spotted a mistake. Fine work, Mr. Potter."

He smiled pleasantly. "If I could see your Patronus, though? I don't doubt you can do it, but it's always a delight to see a well-cast one."

Harry nodded, swallowing down a little flicker of nerves, and made sure to get a good memory fixed in his mind first.

"_Expecto Patronum,"_ he announced, and Ruth burst out of his wand in a flash of silvery light.

He knew that the Patronus was mostly doing what he expected a fire-lizard to do, and it didn't really have a mind of its own, but it seemed as though what he expected a fire-lizard to do in this situation was to show off a bit. Ruth flew a wide circuit around both Professor Tofty and Harry himself, pulled up to hover on wings made of condensed silver mist, then flew slowly over to Harry and waited there.

Professor Tofty applauded. "Excellent!"

Ruth dissolved into wisps, and Harry checked that that was all before heading to the door.

He wasn't quite there, however, when Professor Umbridge came in from the Entrance Hall at a fast walk – the sort that someone did when they wanted to get somewhere quickly but didn't want to _look_ like they wanted to get somewhere quickly, so they did something that was as fast as a walk could get without _technically_ being a run.

The moment she saw Harry, she stopped and stared.

"Good afternoon, Professor," Harry said, giving a little wave, then continued on his way towards the door.

Umbridge twitched slightly.

* * *

"Good afternoon, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said, as Harry passed through into the Entrance Hall. "Did you see Professor Umbridge, at all?"

"She came into the exam room, but she didn't say anything so I kept going," Harry replied. "Is she all right?"

"We just had a discussion about her interrupting my careers meeting with you," Professor McGonagall told him. "I believe she was hoping to supervise your exam, though I can't imagine why."

Harry sort of thought he had a _vague_ idea – maybe she wanted to make some kind of scene – and when he had that thought he immediately thought that perhaps Professor McGonagall knew that perfectly well _herself_.

"Good luck in your exams, Mr. Potter," she added.

* * *

"I didn't realize Professor McGonagall was that sneaky," Dean said, that evening.

"She _has_ had us for seven years," Fred pointed out. "And Harry's dad and that lot for seven years before that."

"Was she the head of house for all of that time?" Ron asked.

"She's been Gryffindor head of house for forty years," Hermione answered absently, looking through her rune dictionaries. "She took over when Dumbledore became headmaster."

She paused, put her finger on a definition she wanted to remember, and looked up. "Actually, that means she must have been head of house when Sirius and the others became Animagi. I wonder if she noticed."

"Wouldn't she have told them off if she noticed?" Neville asked.

"We have just gone through how she's sneaky," Dean said.

"I don't think it makes sense," Harry told them. "That she noticed, I mean. Sirius said that the stuff in Azkaban wasn't set up to keep Animagi in, and if she'd known someone going to Azkaban was an Animagus she'd have at least mentioned they were."

"Unless she thought _she_ might end up there!" George said suddenly.

He nodded sagely. "Cats are evil."

"Shouldn't you two be revising for your NEWTs?" Hermione asked. "Or do you want to tell Crookshanks that cats are evil?"

"He'll take it as a compliment, don't worry," Fred said breezily, but he did stand up. "I think we can tell when we're not wanted, Fred."

"If you _could_, I'd have a much more peaceful life," Ron countered.

"The mistake you're making there, Nutkin, is that you're assuming that we'd _listen_," George informed Ron gravely.

* * *

"When _are_ the NEWTs?" Neville asked, a few minutes later. "The examiners are here, but the hall's busy most of the day."

"They fit NEWTs in around OWLs, at the weekends, and then have the rest of them the week after," Hermione answered. "They usually try to double up exams as well so there are two NEWT examinations happening at once, but it's part of why OWLs happen weeks before the end of term."

"Not just to give them time to mark it?" Dean checked.

"Why would that be a problem, mate?" Ron asked.

"It is in Muggle schools, or I'm pretty sure it is…"

"That's one of those things it's really hard to find out the answer to," Harry realized. "Because unlike a lot of Muggle things nobody actually at Hogwarts has done GCSEs."

"GCSEs is a weird word," Ron opined. "It's a lot weirder than OWLs."

* * *

Friday meant it was time for the Runes OWL, and the exam paper in the morning involved translating runes and writing about their interactions. It started off nice and simple, with single runes and what their elements or meanings were, but got more involved as the paper went on until the final question was about the meaning of the Norse word "Edda" when written in runic form.

It was a surprisingly fiddly question, because you could write it either EDDA (with Ehwaz) or AEDDA (with Eihwaz), and since one of them was an Earth rune and the other was an Air rune it had a significant impact on the result of the whole set – one complicated with how Dagaz, the D rune, could be read as either fire or air.

After about fifteen minutes of carefully writing out the interactions, Harry concluded that AEDDA was probably the correct way of writing it. That combination of runes could be read as all air, and associated inspiration with achievement of potential with spiritual growth – which seemed just right for a word that was so associated with stories.

Or possibly birds, because it wasn't entirely clear where the word "Edda" came from.

* * *

The practical in the afternoon was a bit different, and something Harry had never quite experienced before.

What he had to do was to bring his project notes (and, in his case and the case of a few other people, his actual runic object), and put them in front of the examiner (in Harry's case, Professor Antimony), and explain why they'd chosen the project and why the runes would work out the way they wanted.

There was no actual penalty for not having made a runic object, which Harry had to admit was a bit of a relief – not for him, but for those of his friends who were taking the class and who for one reason or another hadn't had a chance to make something. Hermione for example had assembled copious notes on a design for a small circle of glass that would act like a telescope all by itself, which Harry thought was really neat because it did something more easily than even a normal collapsible telescope could – it was much more portable.

Susan Bones from Hufflepuff had made a comb which presumably did something related to hair – Harry thought he was about the worst person to ask about how you cared for hair, with the possible exception of Empress who hadn't seen any hair in decades – and of course Ron had his rocket which was a bit impractical to fit in the Great Hall, so apparently he was going to be doing the demonstration part outside.

That didn't apply for Harry, of course, though he did have to check with Professor Marchbanks that it was okay for Neville to come and help him demonstrate.

Really, the Runes practical had an awful lot of set up involved, and it was probably a good thing that other subjects weren't like that.

* * *

"Let's see…" Professor Antimony said, once all that had been worked out, and she'd had a chance to read through Harry's notes. "So what made you interested in making a sword for your project?"

"It was a few things," Harry said, thinking back. "One of them is that Neville likes the idea, but really where it got started overall was just that magic swords appear a lot in Muggle books with magic. I think it might be more normal in those to have magic swords than to have wizards."

"I would imagine that some wizards have better sense than to be anywhere near where swords are being swung around," the Professor said dryly. "I can see that you went through several drafts on what the rune sequence should be. Can you explain this one here?"

"Oh, well, I started out trying to spell out Neville's name," Harry explained.

He pointed to the rune sequence in question, and then to the double-L. "But it didn't really seem right to have runes about the sustenance of life doubled up in a sword, because that might make it bad at being a sword – especially without a Hagalaz rune which you'd find on a weapon."

Professor Antimony made a note on some parchment, and Harry continued. "So I reworked the spelling so there was a Hagalaz, but it started to end up sounding a bit, um… evil."

"And why would that be a problem?" she asked.

"Because the word made by a rune set matters as well as the individual runes," Harry answered. "It sort of… affects the interpretation of the runes. So I tried using something with Neville's Animagus name instead, which didn't work _very_ well either."

"Could you clarify that?" Professor Antimony asked him.

* * *

By the end of the exam, almost an hour later, Harry felt like his mind had been used as a dishtowel.

Professor Antimony had had him explain all the decisions he'd made – at least as far as the runes went, along with all the things that affected them – and to show how he'd worked out the interactions, along with why it was that _Panther_'s overt magical effects had resulted from the runes he'd put on it.

She'd also had Neville demonstrate those magical effects, at least to the extent they could be demonstrated, and Harry really had no idea if she'd been satisfied or not. It was just _exhausting_ when someone kept asking for more details and more details until you had to admit you didn't have anything else to say, and then they just moved on to the next thing and started asking again.

"Thank you, Mr. Potter," the examiner eventually (and mercifully) said. "You may go."

Harry stood up, stretched – flexing his spine and opening his wings to their fullest extent, twisting first his legs and then his arms – and gathered up all his notes, collating them back into a single sheaf and tucking them under his wing.

"Thanks for coming along, Neville," he said in turn, as his friend followed him on the way to the door. "I know you could have used the time for something else."

"It's fine," Neville assured him. "As long as you help me with the Potions stuff, anyway. I want to check I've got the right meaning for some of the materials prep, and that exam is on Monday."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Ron reached the demonstration part of his Runes practical.

Harry was about as sure of that as he could be, given that he was currently in Gryffindor Tower – but, then again, it wasn't hard to tell.

He thought people in Hogsmeade could probably hear it.

* * *

"Have you noticed something?" Dean asked, over lunch on Sunday.

"I've noticed a lot of things," Ron riposted. "I've noticed that you shouldn't forget silencing charms on rockets, because people shouting to remind you about them are hard to hear over the sound of a rocket at a thrust of ninety percent of its mass. I've_ also_ noticed that I'm going to have a really weird sleep schedule on Wednesday."

"I think you should use the gap between one Astronomy exam and the other to do History revision, not Astronomy revision," Dean advised. "You've already got Astronomy pretty much set up, but History is a pain."

"Maybe, yeah," Ron admitted. "Or I could use it to get some sleep. Think it's worth using some potions for it or something?"

"I've heard Muggles do that sort of thing with coffee," Harry supplied helpfully.

"That only helps you wake up, not get to sleep," Hermione told him.

"Well, according to the Garfield books, if you drink decaf then you immediately fall asleep," Harry said. "That might just be part of the joke, though."

"Probably," Hermione agreed. "I can send an owl to ask my parents, though."

"Have you noticed something?" Dean asked.

"I just had this strange feeling of deja vu," Neville commented.

"Just look at the House point hourglasses," Dean told them.

Harry duly did, and was surprised to find that Gryffindor were in the lead by something more than two hundred points.

"When did _that_ happen?" Ron asked, somewhat baffled.

"I think it's because Fred and George haven't done _anything_ this year," Dean guessed. "Could be anything, though. Could be Quidditch."

He shrugged. "Could be extra points for basically teaching Defence – everyone's involved, but there's you two from Gryffindor and then there's only about one person from the other three Houses who's _that_ involved."

"Probably Fred and George, though," Ron said, to general nods.

* * *

Potions went past without being anything of note, except that it was an OWL exam. Then Care of Magical Creatures did as well, featuring a Fire Crab (and in which Harry was told that while the examiners were quite aware that he was largely resilient to high temperatures he would nevertheless have to demonstrate the correct technique for feeding one without severe burns), and when Wednesday came around it was time for Astronomy and Arithmancy.

Of the two, Arithmancy was the one which Harry found trickier. It wasn't so much that it was something he was bad at, he was okay with the maths, it was just that with the Astronomy theory paper it was more to do with if you could _remember_ something (mostly) while in Arithmancy's theory paper you had to _do_ things a lot. Like solve a cubic equation, or simplify or redesign equations, and other things like that.

There wasn't a practical, either, so all of the difficulty of the OWL was sort of packed into the Arithmancy paper instead of being spread out. One question in particular was worth something like a quarter of the total marks on the exam and it took Harry more than thirty minutes to do, because it involved integration – something they'd only really started doing that year – and Harry had to use context to work out the intercept, or 'C', before determining which interval of the function had the highest total area under the curve, and _then_ translate that into the most efficient wand movement for casting a spell.

It was a _lot_ of work, and Harry left with the vaguely unpleasant feeling that he'd probably made at least one big mistake _somewhere_ but without any idea where it might be.

Still, from all the groans and sighs he'd heard in the hall as he worked, he might not be the only one.

* * *

"I don't mind telling you, I'm glad Divination is over," Dean said, joining Harry and the others around a table as they revised the right way to plot different stars.

"Did you see anything useful?" Ron checked. "Like our marks?"

"Well, if I remembered right, the tea leaves I read for that Professor Tofty say that he'll be making a lot of money," Dean answered. "It was a sort of cloud shape, but there were dots around it."

He shrugged. "Honestly, the main thing I got from the tea leaf reading was that he puts the milk in first."

Neville hissed. "And to think I talked to him like he was a normal person."

"That's your mistake, mate," Ron said.

"Mind if I borrow your book?" Harry checked, and got an okay from Dean.

He paged through, wondering about something, and stopped on the appropriate page.

"Okay, so this says that human figures are generally good," he said, then flipped back a few. "But this tells me that a dragon is a sign of great change…"

"Don't remind me, I've been trying to stuff my head full of this," Dean said.

"But that's the thing," Harry replied. "The grim – you know, the black dog – that's a sign of death, but _Sirius_ is a black dog and I don't think _he's_ a sign of death. And a fox is a sign of treachery by a trusted friend, but Anna and Tyler can also be represented by foxes."

"Being fair, we _do_ sort of trust them to be Slytherins," Neville opined.

Hermione had been silent so far, but she looked up then. "What's the correction you apply for the time you construct your star chart?"

Harry frowned. "Um… hold on… twenty four times… it's fifteen degrees an hour, right? Or a degree every four minutes?"

"Right," Hermione agreed with a nod, making Harry feel quite pleased with himself.

"Why that bit?" Ron checked.

"It wasn't on the theory paper," Hermione replied.

She made a note, then put her quill down. "Do we want to keep revising Astronomy, or try and get in some more History like Dean said? That exam's tomorrow afternoon, but after a late night tonight we might not have much time in the morning."

"History sounds good," Neville said, then made a face. "Actually it sounds a bit tedious, but I'm more confident about Astronomy so we should probably do History."

"Why _do_ we need to do lots of star charts, actually?" Harry asked. "The stars stay in pretty much the same place, it's the other stuff like planets that moves or at least changes."

"I think it's the same reason why in geography class people have to draw maps," Hermione guessed.

Harry nodded, thinking that that was quite a good reason really.

"It's about showing you know how to do things, probably," he summarized. "It's not like they don't _know_ what twelve cubed is, or what x is, but they're testing _you_ about it."

"It's sort of funny, that, because a lot of magic _isn't_ quite like that," Ron said. "With what you said about Alchemy, it sounds more like there they'd be testing that you're the sort of _person_ who can do the things..."

* * *

The actual Astronomy practical was a pleasant experience and one Harry found sort of peaceful, as he and the rest of the Fifth-Years quietly did their star charts on top of the Astronomy Tower.

The sky was quite light, even at midnight, because it really didn't get very _dark_ in northern Scotland in midsummer – the sun hadn't set until quarter past ten in the evening, and the air was suffused with a kind of ethereal lightness which Harry decided was quite beautiful.

It did make it a _bit_ of a pain to actually check the sky, though, which meant it was sort of like a harder version of making a star chart under normal conditions. It also meant that only the brighter stars could be seen, which actually helped Harry out a bit – something he'd noticed in the past was that his draconic eyesight was so good he could see a lot more stars than most people could, and the lighter sky helped with that a bit.

* * *

"I wonder what the marking scheme is going to be like for that one," Ron said, on the way back downstairs. "Point for every star in the right place? Two points for a planet?"

"What I want to see is what a star chart looks like if you get a Troll grade," Neville replied, then yawned. "Actually, what I want to see is a bed."

"Isn't a Troll grade just a blank star chart?" Parvati asked.

"Well, apart from that," Neville shrugged. "I think it's funnier if doing nothing gets you a D and a T is worse."

He sniggered. "Actually I want to know what a T grade is like on all the subjects. You know… Transfiguration, T, Mr. Longbottom has only managed to turn his wand into a cloud of splinters. Potions, T, Mr. Longbottom has dissolved the bottle into which he put his answer."

Dean took up the same line of thought. "Care of Magical Creatures, T, Mr. Thomas was mauled by a flobberworm."

"How do you get mauled by a flobberworm?" Harry asked.

"It's not easy," Dean replied firmly. "Really, you'd think it would exceed expectations."

He held in a yawn, then shook his head a bit. "Anyway. Bed, or I'm going to fall asleep in History."

* * *

When it came to the final subject on Harry's OWL docket, History of Magic, he had to admit upon leaving the exam that he wasn't sure how well he'd done.

The problem with it all was that history was sort of messy and confusing. It didn't make sense, not like the other subjects – or as much sense as you could really say Charms made – and Harry was fairly sure that he'd got _something_ wrong about the question involving Liechtenstein.

Liechtenstein was one of those really small countries, so were there really enough warlocks there for it to make a difference? Or was it that a lot of wizards from other countries had gone there and it had ended up sort of like the Hogsmeade or Ottery St. Catchpole of the Alps?

Either way, though, there was one thing that was quite important to Harry.

"That's it for OWLs," he said, as they went through the hole into Gryffindor common room.

"For you, maybe," Ron retorted. "Nev, Hermione and I have got Muggle Studies tomorrow."

"Oh, yeah, good point," Harry admitted. "Sorry."

He shrugged a wing. "I think I'm just… a bit relieved, really. Now I've got time to catch up on my reading, and other stuff like that."

"I'm looking forward to that," Ron said. "And Quidditch, too."

He paused, and sighed. "I can't believe I'm about to ask this, but… can you two help me revise a bit?"

"Sure," Dean agreed. "You're a mate."

Harry nodded as well, and Ron relaxed a bit.

"Thanks," he told them both. "So… look, I really need to make sure I've got this right… what _is_ the offside rule?"

"Hold on, I'll go get my pencils," Dean said. "This is going to need a diagram."

* * *

Friday's weather was unambiguously glorious.

There wasn't a single cloud visible in the sky, and while the air was a bit hazy it was still clear enough to see the Cuillins on distant Skye.

Really, it was the sort of day that made you happy to be outdoors, and it was so nice that Harry spent most of the day feeling vaguely guilty about how Ron, Neville and Hermione were missing it (as he lounged outside with Dean, Daphne, Blaise and his copy of _Domes of Fire_, because if you were going to feel vaguely guilty anyway you may as well not waste what was making you feel that way).

"It's weird to think that we might be in _none_ of the same classes after this," Dean said.

"Well, lots of people are going to do the wanded subjects," Blaise pointed out. "I know _I'm_ seriously considering doing Defence Against Daphne's Aunt."

"...how long have you been saving that one up?" Daphne demanded.

"About five years," Blaise answered. "Maybe more. That's the thing with a good joke like that, you need to choose your time to strike from ambush."

"That's because snakes are ambush predators, right?" Harry checked, putting his claw in his book to keep his place.

"Of course," Blaise agreed.

"Lions are as well," Harry told him. "Or, sort of. They have this way of hunting where one of them goes out in the open making all the noise, and scares the prey into being caught by the other lionesses."

"What, really?" Daphne asked. "Huh. That sounds almost Slytherin."

"Isn't the most Slytherin thing to be a Gryffindor, so nobody will suspect?" Dean asked. "Or is it the most Slytherin thing to not be Slytherin-y but be in Slytherin so people will put you in a mental box, but really you're not sneaky but just being sneaky about whether or not you're sneaky?"

"Stop before you give me a headache," Daphne pleaded. "I thought we were done with exams!"

"We're done with _school work_, until Sixth Year," Harry corrected, then frowned. "Which… I think means that I actually have a completely open summer holiday."

Dean sniggered. "Yeah, me too. It's going to feel _weird_ not having magic homework to do for summer."

"Just don't forget that you're still not allowed to do magic," Blaise advised. "I wouldn't mention it, but I understand you're not doing Muggle Studies so you might forget things about Muggles."

"Blaise,_ you're_ not doing Muggle Studies," Daphne pointed out. "The Muggle Studies exam is going on in there right now, Tracey is trying to remember what a video is or something."

"Is that the kind of thing that's on the exam?" Dean said, as Harry replaced his claw with a proper bookmark.

"I'm guessing," Daphne told him. "Because I didn't do Muggle Studies either."

A dinosaur came striding across the grass towards them, skidded to a halt and turned into Hermione – not that anyone had expected anything else.

"So, what was on the exam?" Blaise said. "We've been speculating about it for _ages_, and now you're here."

"I don't think that was ages," Harry frowned. "Ages usually means very long. In Middle-Earth an Age is several thousand years."

"But everyone was a minute old at some point," Blaise told him. "So a minute is an age."

"Well, I had to change a bulb, and wire a plug," Hermione answered. "Then there was doing exact change, which was pretty easy… and making a telephone call."

"What, with a mobile phone?" Dean asked. "Bit expensive for an exam, isn't it?"

"No, it wasn't a real phone, I just had to dial the numbers and so on," Hermione explained. "It was one of those old ones with a ring dial, though."

"Wonder what the NEWT exam is like," Dean mused. "Start in East Ham and get back to Diagon Alley without casting a spell?"

"Maybe it's just setting up a video recorder to record something," Hermione replied. "I'm not sure my _parents_ could do that reliably."

Harry had to agree with the idea that that was difficult. He'd eaten three video machines over the years when Dudley had thrown them out of various windows from frustration.

* * *

AN:

Really, using a video cassette machine isn't _that_ hard.

Of course, I haven't done it in_ considerably _more than a decade, so it might be harder than I remember...


	81. A Dragon, Being Bereft Of Schoolwork

Now that exams were well and truly over, at least for the Fifth-Years, Harry found himself with an almost intoxicating amount of free time – and, in particular, free time in which he was able to use magic.

One of the first things he did was make a belated trip to Fort William to return some library books, take others out and pick up anything new and interesting in the book shops, and one of the first books he saw while he was there was one by the same person who'd written _A Tale of Time City_ and _Howl's Moving Castle_ – only it wasn't really in the same sort of style as those books, instead it was in a sort of guide book style which Harry puzzled over for a minute or two before deciding that it was meant to be a guide to _fantasy novels_.

At that point, it became extremely funny. Harry particularly liked the entry on **Swords**, which announced that if you found a broken sword you should discard it immediately because before too long 'you will be required to reforge the bugger' and it would mean about a year learning metalwork.

And the bit about how **Rings** were usually the sort of thing that could put you under the influence of the **Dark Lord** was entirely relevant to Harry's experience.

* * *

As it was the first time Harry had had such an extended period of homework-free time at Hogwarts, that also meant he spent an hour or two a day in the library. The atmosphere there was sort of highly charged, in the sense that there were a lot of people there still revising for their own exams – the last few NEWTs or just the end-of-year exams – because the OWLs came first, but Harry did his best to just sit there in a vaguely available sort of way on the grounds that he _was_ a Prefect and this was one way he could help with that.

"I wonder if the books in the Restricted Section are available if you're doing NEWTs?" Neville mused. "I don't know how they organize it."

"Maybe it's if you want a specific book from the Restricted Section you have to ask the librarian?" Dean suggested.

"I'm not sure that would work," Neville shrugged.

After a pause, he elaborated. "Half the point of a library is that you can browse through it, right? So you can check which books fit what you're after. And if you already knew what books you wanted, there wouldn't be much point."

"But the books in the Restricted Section are dangerous," Harry said, craning his neck a bit. (He had quite a good capacity for craning his neck, which was just one of the nice things about being a dragon.) "And it looks like a lot of them don't have the titles on them, either."

"Maybe you just get a pass," Neville pondered. "And then you have to take the books to the librarian? And it's if you're doing the subject…"

"Maybe we should ask," Dean determined.

"Do we ask someone doing NEWTs, though, or Madam Pince?" Harry said.

He frowned. "Or Hermione. I imagine she's probably retrieved a book from the Restricted Section at _some_ point."

"Where _is_ Hermione, actually?" Neville checked.

"Watching Quidditch practice," Dean told him. "I might see if the librarian's around to ask."

Before he could, though, there were some raised voices from around one of the bookshelves.

It sounded like someone was unhappy about their book – or, rather, two someones were unhappy for different reasons, and that one of those someones had the book.

Harry got up, slipping one of his bookmarks into the book he'd been reading, and leaned around the corner. "Is everything okay?"

"No, it's not!" said one of the students hotly, a Slytherin boy who Harry thought was in third-year. "That book was mine, and she-"

"Hey!" the Ravenclaw girl replied. "It was an-"

"Hold on," Harry asked them both. "If you're both speaking at once I can't understand either of you."

He looked at the book in question, a copy of _One Thousand Magical Herbs And Fungi _which didn't look like it was in a good way. It seemed as though it had somehow been dropped wrong, and maybe had been in a bad way before, because the binding had torn and the pages were hanging out.

"Is that book one that someone else had before you?" he asked the boy. "Or is it one you got from a bookshop recently?"

"It was my mother's," the Slytherin said. "And she-"

"Hold on," Harry asked again, as he thought the shouting was about to start, and turned to the girl. "What happened?"

"Well…" the girl began, sounding a bit embarrassed. "I wanted to borrow Smitty's book for revision, because our Herbology exam is coming up soon and I don't have one myself. And he said I could, but it…"

She waved her hand. "...slipped."

"Okay," Harry said. "Do you mind if I try repairing it?"

"You think you could?" Smitty asked, hopefully.

Harry's reply was to take his wand out of his robe pocket and tap the spine, near the bit which had torn. _"Reparo."_

The binding re-bound itself smoothly, pulling back into place so that the book looked as it should (except for how it was an older book with the inevitable little scuffs and slightly yellowed pages), and Harry closed it before putting it on the table and turning his attention to the girl. "And I think you should apologize. Even breaking someone's things by mistake still means they got broken."

"Right," the girl agreed. "Uh… sorry, yeah. I suppose I should have been more careful."

Smitty looked at her critically for a few seconds, then nodded. "Okay, just be more careful next time."

"I'm kind of surprised there's going to _be_ a next time," the girl admitted. "I mean…"

"I had the time to think about it a bit," Smitty said, a bit sheepishly. "And I realized that there are things of _yours_ that _I'd_ want to borrow..."

* * *

Harry felt good about that for the rest of the week.

Though it did take him an hour or so to realize that "Smitty" was probably a nickname for someone called "Smith".

* * *

The final Quidditch matches of the year came around after NEWTs, and fortunately they came around _enough_ after NEWTs that there was time for those players who'd been doing exams to get some quick practice in and make sure their standard of play was as high as possible.

Slytherin against Hufflepuff came first, and after twenty or thirty minutes of play Cedric caught the Snitch – which gave him a clean Snitch sweep – though Hufflepuff didn't have a truly commanding lead, and when he wrote out the numbers he realized that it was one of those weird situations where if Ravenclaw won by a _lot_ of points then they'd win, otherwise Hufflepuff would win unless it was _Gryffindor_ who won by a _lot_ of points.

Slytherin were just behind Hufflepuff, all told, but without a game in hand it was just not mathematically possible for them to win.

* * *

"Blimey, no pressure," Ron muttered, the morning of the game.

"It's about having fun, right?" Harry asked. "You just see how it works out."

"Of course it's about having fun," Ginny agreed. "And you know what's fun?"

She pointed at Fred and George.

"To crush your enemies," Fred said.

"To see them driven before you," George agreed.

"And to hear the lamentations of their Seeker," Fred concluded.

"I think that gets mentioned in one of the Discworld books," Harry told them. "Only in that one because Cohen the Barbarian is about eighty years old he wants hot water, good dentistry and soft lavatory paper."

"...actually, he has a point," Ginny mused. "But yeah, it's about fun, and winning is fun."

"Just remember not to catch the Snitch until you're meant to catch the Snitch," Ron told her.

"Thank you, Ron, that's very helpful," Ginny said, with a bit of a sigh in her voice. "Any other useful insights?"

"Nope, just that one," Ron shrugged.

"Very helpful."

* * *

The way this sort of thing was supposed to work was that there would be a beautiful summer's day for the final Quidditch match of the year, one that celebrated the end of exams – and the end of school – and started everyone off on their summer holidays.

What actually happened, however, was that it rained a lot.

It was still warm, but not _hot_, and that meant the rain wasn't as bad as it could have been (at least as far as everyone else was concerned; Harry had heard of humidity but he didn't think it bothered dragons much). In fact, even though the rain was annoying, the _temperature_ was probably better for a lot of people than it would have been without the rainstorm coming down.

That didn't make it anything other than annoying, though.

Despite the unfortunate weather, the Quidditch game was excellent. Fred and George were truly on form, sending their Bludgers every which way, and more than once Harry saw one go rocketing at Ron or Ginny only for the Weasley in question to dodge out of the way – not without a few complaints – and the Bludger go on to do something useful which the Ravenclaw team hadn't properly allowed for, like curving around to have a second run at Ron and knocking a Ravenclaw chaser off his broom. Or smashing into the _other_ Bludger with an echoing _clang_ that kept Katie safe from the Ravenclaw Beaters and able to go through and score.

Harry was impressed, and he was impressed with the Gryffindor Chasers as well. After what was now at least five years working together they'd reached a kind of coordination where half the time they didn't even need signals, and the Quaffle bounced from one to another with a fluid grace that more often than not ended in a goal – and when it didn't it was usually the result of a tiring, last-minute save from the Ravenclaw Keeper.

Harry might have been biased, but he thought it was Ginny and Ron who were the real stars of the Gryffindor team. The Ravenclaw Chasers were good, and Ron had to make plenty of saves, but – and as the game went on it got more impressive by the minute – Ron was saving so many of the shots on goal that the Ravenclaw score was going up about four times more slowly than the Gryffindor one. And Ginny kept diving through the rest of the game at speed, only coming up to altitude to look around for the Snitch for a moment before stooping back down to disrupt a Ravenclaw attempt on goal or distract the Keeper before another Gryffindor shot.

"The funny thing is, in a few years this is probably going to be the other way around," Dean guessed. "By our seventh year the only people from this team who are still going to be in it are Ron and Ginny, but the Ravenclaws are mostly going to be the same people with more practice."

Harry nodded, then saw Ginny swooping down.

Something about how she was moving was different, and it took only a moment to realize she must have seen the Snitch. The problem was, Cho Chang from Ravenclaw had noticed as well, and she sped down to intercept.

"I think she hasn't seen the Snitch," Harry said, speaking quickly, and judging by the position of the Snitch and where both Seekers were flying. "Ginny has but Cho hasn't-"

Cho Chang suddenly swerved, just as Ginny let go of her broom to do her Perry trick, and there was a complicated blur of wood and feather and Quidditch player which ended with Cho holding the Golden Snitch aloft.

Ginny let out a loud call which sounded like 'cak', then began gliding down to where her broom had hit the grass.

"_Cho Chang catches the Snitch!"_ Lee Jordan announced from the commentator's booth. _"That means – that means Gryffindor win the match by thirty points, and it means Hufflepuff win the Quidditch Cup! Is my Arithmancy right, Professor?"_

"_Much as I would like to correct you, Mr. Jordan, I believe you are correct,"_ Professor McGonagall told him.

"Why did she do that?" Neville asked.

"Cedric's her boyfriend," Dean told him. "Probably has something to do with it."

"Or, just perhaps, she was trying to do her job as part of her team?" Hermione suggested.

"That's crazy talk," Dean said, shaking his head.

* * *

Harry made sure to have a bath in the Prefect's Bathroom the night before the Leaving Feast, reasoning that he wasn't going to get a chance to enjoy it in at least a couple of months so he may as well, and then – because he'd just finished a book with her – he offered Empress the option of switching from the _Pern_ books to the Discworld.

"A lot of it might not really be something you can understand very well," he admitted. "But since a lot of what's in them that you might not understand is something about the modern world – even if a lot of _that_ is the modern Muggle world rather than the modern Wizarding world – I thought it might be good because that way we can talk about things when they come up."

"_That does sound like a reasonable idea, at this point,"_ Empress said. _"But then, I don't know enough to say."_

"There's kind of… several different story lines, and they sometimes meet up," Harry told her, wondering which would be the best one to start with. "There's one that's about Death, who's a person and not really very unpleasant… and there's another one which is about some witches…"

Thinking about how the first story with the Lancre Witches was based most strongly on _Macbeth_, which was something that Empress couldn't possibly have read or experienced, Harry moved on a bit. "Maybe the one which would work best to start with is the one about the City Watch. That's actually got dragons in it, though most of them aren't very impressive."

"_Why am I not surprised that dragons are involved,"_ Empress hissed, with what translated to Harry's ears as a chuckle. _"If you think it would be a good idea, then that sounds like as good a reason as any."_

Harry smiled, and opened the book to the foreword. _"They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time-"_

"_How long is a film, usually?"_ Empress asked. _"I gather that it is a way of telling stories, but…"_

"Oh, usually about one and a half hours to two hours," Harry told her. "And you're right, it's a way of telling stories using moving pictures with sound. Sort of like-"

Harry was going to say it was sort of like a Wizarding photograph with sound, but then he remembered that photographs hadn't been invented that long ago.

"_Like a painting?"_ Empress suggested.

"Like that, sort of," Harry agreed, then resumed.

* * *

At the Leaving Feast itself, before the food had actually been put out, Dumbledore stood and cleared his throat.

"If I could have a moment to make a few announcements?" he asked.

There was a silence in reply, one which went on for an uncomfortably long time. Harry started counting, trying to count one second at a time, and he'd reached twenty-four when Cedric coughed diffidently.

"I don't think anyone would stop you, Professor," he said.

"Excellent!" Dumbledore smiled, as if there'd been no awkward pause. "First and foremost, allow me to congratulate Hufflepuff House most heartily on their victory in the Quidditch Cup!"

Harry applauded along with the rest of the room, because the Hufflepuff team really _had_ done well – he thought the Gryffindor team had been slightly better, overall, but that was no reason not to give them their due for winning the Quidditch Cup.

Cedric went up to take it, and thanked the rest of his team – which was nice – and then Dumbledore continued. "Secondly, I wish to extend my congratulations to Messers. Fred and George Weasley for having done very little to disrupt the school's learning environment this year. This has of course meant that some, and I am among them, might say that things have been a trifle boring, but it also means I can announce that Gryffindor has won the House Cup!"

Almost the moment he said it, there was a hissing shriek and a whole constellation of fireworks exploded in the air over the Great Hall's tables.

Catherine wheels five feet in diameter shot through the air, chased by lions made of golden sparks that trailed smoke from their manes. A rocket with a trail of red sparks orbited one of the lions like a comet, speeding up the closer it got and shooting out pyrotechnic embers, then burst with an emphatic **bang** and sent a wave of multicoloured butterflies spreading out in all directions.

A Roman candle whistled into the air, with the trail splitting with a succession of thundercrack _bang_s at three different heights and creating the illusion of a green and silver oak tree floating over the Slytherin table – one which dropped acorns that burst into wisps of white smoke upon striking anything remotely solid. One table over there was a much stranger combination of effects that produced a waterfall of smoke, up which salmon made of bronze stars swam before exploding upon reaching the top, and to cap things off there was an ominous rumble before a volcanic eruption made entirely out of firework sparks and trails burst into the air.

Harry was quite impressed that they'd got the pyroclastic flows right. And it might have technically been a guess, but it wasn't like anyone didn't know who the culprits were – a suspicion which was confirmed when a brilliant orange sparkler wrote words ten feet high over the high table.

_Marauders' Magical Miscellany_

_Opening this summer_

_In Diagon Alley probably_

And a funny logo with a MMM.

"How long have you been working on that?" Hermione called, over the shrieks and bangs.

She sounded more impressed than anything.

"All year!" Fred replied. "We had to keep ourselves busy with _something!_"

* * *

Once the impromptu display was over, and Dumbledore had admitted with a wink that he could not take points because the House Cup was already given, it was time for the food. Harry found it all as tasty as usual, and there were even some new dishes he hadn't had yet – in particular a kind of buttered melange of beans and maize, which had a name that was difficult to pronounce and according to someone from the other end of the table was from South Africa.

This sort of take-what-you-want feast was a good time for trying new things, in Harry's opinion, because if you didn't end up liking any of the new things you could just have the old things instead. Though he hadn't encountered much food he didn't like – he was sure there was _something_ but you'd have to give him a few minutes to think of one.

"The school's not going to be the same without Gred and Forge," Ron mused. "...on the other hand, there are still Anne and Tyler, so it's not going to get completely normal any time soon."

"They've learned well," George said solemnly.

"They learned from the best," Fred agreed.

"And you," Ginny piped up.

"...walked into that one," Fred grumbled.

Finally, the puddings were all had, and Dumbledore stood one more time.

"I wish to make one final announcement," he told the room. "And then you can all go off and sleep, before the train takes you off tomorrow morning. That announcement is this."

He smiled pleasantly. "The position of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is now vacant."

Umbridge looked like someone had just hit her over the head very hard, possibly with a classroom. Everyone else sort of just sat there in surprise for a moment, and then – and Harry couldn't have told you where – the cheering started.

* * *

"So!" Cedric asked, in the Prefect's Carriage, as they sped out of the station. "How's your first year as a Prefect been?"

"I have to admit, it's been a bit less fun than I was expecting," Draco said, inspecting his badge. "When I was a First-Year I seem to remember Prefects mostly turning up and doing things for no reason, but now that I _am_ a Prefect there seem to be reasons for everything I'm doing."

He shook his head. "It's most annoying."

"Isn't that just called perspective?" Patricia asked.

"I'm sure it's nothing of the sort," Draco dismissed.

"One thing I've noticed is that I think Fifth Year might be the hardest year for a Prefect," Harry said. "It's the year you have your OWLs, and everyone has at least nine of those, while there's much less in the way of NEWTs – so your schedule is crowded – and you're also trying to learn how to be a Prefect, on top of that."

"Well noticed," Cedric told him. "And yes, it does get a bit easier. It helps if you're not trying to win an international competition on top of that, actually."

That prompted a few sniggers.

"Well, I think that's just about everything," Cedric added. "Anyone got anything else?"

"Is that it?" Hannah said, trying not to smile.

"Well, there isn't much point having you try and remember things over the summer," Cedric pointed out. "You'll have a couple of months to forget them, like Professor Dumbledore says."

He looked around at the television, which had just started working again as they sped away from Hogwarts (and which had apparently been fixed, as instead of showing Ceefax it was showing a documentary about how you could colour in a map with only four colours), and got up out of his chair. He spun the chair around to point at the television with a flick of his wand, then sat in it and turned into a badger.

"...since when could you do that?" Hermione asked.

"He learned earlier this year," Ernie told her. "Something about how it might have been useful, and he had enough free time."

* * *

Harry waited in the Prefect's Carriage a bit longer, to see if anyone would come to them with something urgent, then decided to go and see everyone for what would be the last time until towards the end of summer (or, in some cases, until he visited them for other reasons, like Fred and George).

The customary expanded compartment was already set up when he arrived – probably the work of the Weasley Twins – and just about all the unusually shaped students who didn't live in the Forbidden Forest were there, plus Melody who wasn't technically unusually shaped but who counted, and since it was about half an hour after they'd set off everyone was already settling into how they were going to use the long hours as the train sped south.

Ron was trying to explain to two sets of travel wizard chess pieces that he wanted them to try playing together on a big non-travel chessboard, albeit without much success, while next to him Neville was leafing through his copy of a book about the development of _The Lord of The Rings_.

Harry remembered reading that the last of that series was going to come out later this year, and he was interested to see what it included.

On one of the seats Dean was trying to explain about West Ham to Melody, and by the sounds of things either she was trying to mess with him (which was entirely possible) or she wanted to know about the other teams he mentioned just as much as she wanted to know about West Ham (which was also entirely possible), and Harry couldn't tell which was more likely.

"So here's my question," Anna said, sitting up and pointing at Fred. "How are you going to include something that represents the rest of us in the shop sign?"

"Are you saying you're not Marauders by association?" George asked, answering the question he hadn't been asked with another question.

"That counts all of us, sure," Anna allowed. "But you originally wanted to call it Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and if you put a mirror over the top of the MMM logo then you get a WWW logo."

"Do you?" Fred said, sounding shocked. "That had not occurred to either of us."

"Yeah, no," Tyler told him. "You two might be slippery enough to be kitsune but we're not going to believe you missed that."

"_I_ missed that," Lee Jordan confessed. "But then again, I was mostly trying to make sure these two got at least some NEWTs."

"I'll have you know that we're very talented magic users," George sniffed.

"Unfortunately, Professor Tofty doesn't take chocolates as proof of Transfiguration skill at NEWT level," Lee shrugged. "Even if they turn him _into_ a newt."

* * *

Perhaps predictably, Hermione got out a big book she'd borrowed from the Hogwarts library to read over the summer – one of several, probably – and Ginny, Luna and Tanisis were soon absorbed in a discussion about scheduling things so they could do their shared homework together as much as possible over the course of July. That left Harry with time to read (he was reading a book called_ Shadows of the Empire _which was set sort of between the second and third Star Wars films, so it was a bit like it was Episode Five And A Half) and he was some way into reading about the Many Bothans who had Died to Bring Them That Information when something occurred to him.

It looked like Isaac had ended up sort of left without anyone to talk to.

Rummaging through the books in his backpack – a collection of new ones he hadn't read before and old classics he wanted to read again – Harry selected a few, among them _Mort_ by Terry Pratchett and _The Black Gryphon_ by Mercedes Lackey.

"Do you want to borrow a book for the journey?" he asked, getting Isaac's attention. "This one's sort of a comedy one, and this one's more of a magic adventure story sort of thing."

He was about to continue, but Isaac tapped on _The Black Gryphon_ with a claw. "That one, please," he requested, in perfect English with a faint Scouse accent.

All the rest of the conversations going on in the compartment just _stopped_, and there were several seconds of silence. (Harry could understand why, because he was having a bit of trouble with what had just happened himself.)

"...now _that_," George said, eventually, "is the kind of Slytherin I can support."

* * *

Quite a few people had questions for Isaac, and the griffin ended up spending the next ten or twenty minutes explaining things instead of reading the book Harry had lent him.

Which did at least solve the problem of having nobody to talk to.

It seemed that when they'd started the year Isaac had been able to speak a little bit of English, but not much, and had been using the slate for long enough that he'd just preferred to keep it up rather than speaking in broken English. Then the thing with Umbridge had come up, and Isaac had just stuck to it as he'd gradually improved (mostly by practising on a mirror-call with a wizard he knew back home in Liverpool, which explained the accent).

Harry decided to be Responsible for a bit, based on his badge, and pointed out that it might actually be a bit of a problem if someone found out, because that would mean that someone like Umbridge could say Isaac had been disrupting class by not answering.

"...oh," Isaac said, looking a bit nervous. "I didn't think of that."

"So why _did_ you learn that click language?" Tyler asked.

"That's much easier to learn," the griffin answered. "I had a lot more trouble with some of the syllables in English."

He shrugged a wing. "I'm still not great, though."

"Well, maybe if you improve a bit more over the summer, you can focus on that?" Harry suggested.

Really, it wasn't even the first time the way someone had learned a language had been sort of sensitive information.

* * *

Harry let Isaac keep _The Black Gryphon_, because he had another copy, and flew back to Privet Drive himself.

Surprisingly, there'd been a few changes since the last time Harry had been there. The house was still the same size and shape, except for a bigger greenhouse, but the front drive had been made larger and there was a shiny new moped next to a car that Harry didn't recognize and that had replaced Uncle Vernon's old car.

That had made Harry slightly concerned that his aunt and uncle had moved out without telling him, but nothing of the sort had happened – instead, it was quite the reverse, and the reasons for the changes started with the fact that Grunnings was doing very well indeed.

Harry wasn't sure of the details of the car, except that it was expensive, but Uncle Vernon was so proud of it that he spent several minutes showing Harry around the inside of it (albeit from the outside).

Diplomatically, Harry didn't mention how tasty the new car smell smelled.

The moped's explanation was even simpler, and it was that Dudley had turned sixteen a few days previously – which meant that he was now able to learn to drive a moped, even if he was still a year too young to start learning on a car. He was still big (if Dudley ever didn't look big then Harry would _know_ something was wrong) but it seemed like his new pursuit of boxing was agreeing with him.

Possibly as a result of intimidation.

* * *

"Hey, Harry!" Dudley called, as Harry was on his way upstairs one day. "Come and have a look at this!"

Harry took his claws off the ladder and went into Dudley's main bedroom, where one of his televisions was hooked up to a complicated mess of wires that led to a videotape machine and several games consoles.

There were bits attached to some of the game consoles that Harry didn't think had been there last year, and he looked at them before glancing at Dudley.

"It's on the screen," Dudley explained, pointing, and started enthusiastically pressing buttons on the controller.

He appeared to be controlling a golden robot man, and whenever he hit one of the buttons the robot jumped so high he sometimes vanished off the top of the screen. He was also firing huge blasts of energy every second or two, completely destroying almost every enemy that appeared before they had time to do anything.

"Isn't it great?" Dudley asked. "I got loads of Action Replay codes off Piers, and there's one that gives you a green sword that kills _anything_! This is much more fun than trying to do it the hard way."

He paused, then gave Harry a look. "Actually, do you have games like this and stuff at… you know, your school?"

"TVs don't work there," Harry replied. "Not sure why yet, but it's probably something to do with magic. A Game Boy is fine, though."

"Weird," Dudley summarized. "I wouldn't want to go to school somewhere where you can't watch telly. You must be…"

He stopped. "Or, no, you like books and stuff. So you wouldn't be bored."

* * *

For most of July, Harry found himself at sort of a loose end.

He did have books to read, and there was cooking and cleaning to do – he was able to try out a few new recipes – and Harry also took the time to write out some more ideas for Dungeons and Dragons, in case he had enough time to spare now OWLs were done to actually start the club up again.

There was also a letter from Draco that turned up about halfway through July, delivered by the Slytherin boy's enormous Screech Owl, in which Draco said that he'd found out just _why_ they'd ended up with Umbridge and it was because his father had supported her for reasons that Draco said sounded not really worth it all things considered.

He didn't say what the reasons were, and in Harry's opinion it would be quite hard for there to be a reason which qualified as worth it, but she didn't have the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher job any more so it didn't really _matter_ any more.

Then towards the end of July a letter arrived from Dumbledore – delivered by Fawkes, in fact – in which he said that, in his opinion, the most likely place for Tom Riddle's final Horcrux to be was that it would be in someone's vault somewhere in Gringotts.

In a way that was good to know, but in another way it meant there was still a problem, because getting into the vault would be very difficult indeed. Gringotts had an all but spotless reputation, which they guarded zealously, and while (as Dumbledore outlined) there were only so many people who had Gringotts vaults who had been part of the Death Eaters – Imperiused, 'Imperiused' or not – there were still several of them, and they didn't even know which vault to look into as a result.

There was something about the list which Harry thought he wasn't quite seeing, something which would be a clue, but after teasing at it for a bit he ultimately decided to put it aside for now and started making himself a cake. It was a recipe that used yoghurt and chocolate, and he thought it would be just the sort of thing to have on his birthday.

* * *

Twenty minutes later and halfway through the mixing process, Harry realized that Mr. Malfoy had been one of the people who had had a Horcrux – and that because of Draco's mother the family was actually Malfoys _plus_ one of the Blacks.

And it had been Kreacher, the Black House-Elf, who'd been involved in hiding another one of the Horcruxes – one which Regulus had retrieved, though of course they hoped that Riddle didn't know about that.

Sirius obviously didn't have a Horcrux, and nor did Andromeda, but the last of the Blacks from that generation was Bellatrix… someone who had most certainly been a Death Eater, and who'd married into the Lestrange family. And she'd been one of Voldemort's most committed supporters, as well.

It all made a great deal of sense, and Harry almost sent a Patronus to see if Dumbledore was alone (to see if he could talk about the sensitive information) before remembering that he was at home and he wasn't allowed to use magic yet.

Instead he got out the mirror that linked to Sirius, called Sirius, and had him do it.

The result was that Fawkes returned, ready to take a letter, and Harry resolved to apologize to Hedwig once she got back from delivering a birthday card and present to Neville.

Dumbledore's reply was that he thought it was an excellent place to start looking, assuming of course that they worked out a way to actually look in the first place. He added that he would see if he could get anything out of Gringotts that might be useful, though he was not sure how quickly it could be done.

Unfortunately, after all that, the recipe went a bit wrong. Harry got mixed up with some of the ingredients, and the cake he produced was sort of soaked through with runny icing that oozed out when it was cut.

It would have been a great effect if it was what he was going for, but it wasn't so Harry mostly just sighed and decided to try again tomorrow.

* * *

Harry left Number Four, Privet Drive on his sixteenth birthday, flying from the window towards Grimmauld Place, and it was only once he'd left that it occurred to him to wonder what his Aunt and Uncle thought of his occasional disappearing acts like that.

It was sometimes hard to remember that they were Muggles and therefore didn't know that he was a dragon, because Harry had spent the first several years of his life as a dragon assuming they _did_ know and had more or less immediately gone from that to living around people who knew he was a dragon for eleven months of every year. With people he'd only met after finding out about magic it was much easier to remember, but the habits of a lifetime were hard to shake.

Maybe they just thought he used magic, really. Which wasn't wrong, though it had very few details and it wouldn't go well on an OWL paper.

* * *

The door to Grimmauld Place opened as Harry landed, and Sirius waved him inside.

"Happy Birthday, Harry!" he said. "How does it feel being sixteen?"

"Not very different from when I was fifteen, really," Harry replied, thinking. "I don't think there's anything new I can do now that I couldn't do before."

"I think there is some stuff you can do," Sirius frowned. "I know I moved out of here as soon as I turned sixteen, and I must have had a reason for waiting that long."

"That's not really something that bothers me," Harry said.

He tilted his head. "I think I'm now Of Age for some Muggle things, but they're not things I'm interested in. I know I can't legally cast magic outside of school until I'm seventeen."

"Which is a bit funny, if you ask me," Sirius shrugged. "You've got your OWLs, you'd think it'd be that. Anyway, Kreacher's got the birthday lunch ready, and there are some presents as well. And Sarah Abbott – that's your schoolmate Hannah's mum – says it won't be a problem if we use their Floo this afternoon."

They'd reached the living room while Sirius was talking, and he theatrically sank back onto a sofa. "I'm planning ahead and being responsible… what's happened to me?"

"Well, you are an old dog," Harry said, doing a quick bit of mental calculation. "You're, what, three hundred in dog years?"

"Low blow," Sirius grinned. "How old are you in dragon years? Is it even your birthday in dragon years?"

"...actually, I've got no idea," Harry admitted. "Some dragons live quite a long time, but I don't know if I'm one of them and the only way to find out is to ask myself that question again once I'm older."

"Age is funny like that," Sirius agreed. "You don't know how much you're going to get at the start, which is terrible planning. Make sure to give a bad review."

He got up again, taking a plate from the side of the table and starting to butter a slice of baguette. "The only question is who you send the review to…"

* * *

Harry got some quite good presents, like a new Redwall book called _The Pearls of Lutra_ (from Dean) and a bag that was bigger on the inside (from Hermione, who said it would make it easier for him to carry things from class to class), as well as spider plants from Neville.

Harry had the feeling he'd be getting spider plants from Neville for years, because the one he'd got for Neville years ago had turned out to be the progenitor of a whole forest of spider plants.

Was that the collective noun? Harry wasn't sure.

There was also a book from Dumbledore, which contained with it a letter that apologized for getting Harry a book but he rather thought that Harry would appreciate this one. (Not a hard guess, for Harry, unless it was a book he already had – but this book was _not_ a book Harry already had, so it qualified.)

"What's that, then?" Sirius asked, as Harry turned the thick book over in his paws.

"The Hermetic Book of Alchemy," Harry read off the front cover, then opened it to see what was inside. "It says it's by Nicholas Flamel."

"Wonder how old it is, then," Sirius said.

Harry wondered that, as well, because Nicholas Flamel was more than six hundred and sixty years old and so he could have written this book well before the discovery of America.

Or in French, though the inside leaf did seem to be English.

He opened it carefully to an inside page, and felt the paper before looking at what was written on it (in typeset text, not handwriting). "It feels quite new, and the paper isn't yellow…" he said, thinking out loud, then had an idea and turned to the inside back cover.

"About the Author," he read off. "Nicholas Flamel is six hundred and seventy at the time of writing and enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle."

Turning back to the front, and feeling faintly foolish he hadn't done that in the first place, Harry checked and saw that the book had been first published in 1996 – and was signed by Nicholas Flamel himself on the frontleaf.

"I think that's got to be some kind of record," Sirius mused. "Do you think anyone else has ever written a book at age six hundred and seventy?"

"Probably not," Harry agreed.

"Is that your Alchemy text book?" Sirius added. "I know you said you were interested in that, and I can never keep track of when the letters go out – do you know your OWL marks?"

"I haven't got either yet," Harry told him. "They have to send out the marks before the book list, right?"

Sirius shrugged.

* * *

Harry could have read the alchemy book all day, and indeed he thought he should give it a try at some point in the summer, but around two in the afternoon (and surrounded by drifts of wrapping paper, which Kreacher _insisted_ they leave for him to clean up) Sirius reminded him that it was time to take the Floo.

Going by Floo to somewhere that wasn't a public place _and_ wasn't somewhere Harry was actually _going_ felt a bit strange. It wasn't like when he went to Neville's house by Floo, because that was like driving to someone's house – you were going _there_ so you went _there_ – but going to Hannah Abbott's house by Floo just to get to Godric's Hollow felt more like visiting Liverpool by driving your car to someone's house and parking in the garage.

Harry thought about whether that was the best way to put it, then thought about it a bit more, and as Mrs. Abbott showed them through the house from the Floo room to the front door he decided that he was probably thinking about this a _lot_ more than most wizards did.

* * *

Harry didn't really know what he'd expected.

Godric's Hollow wasn't like Hogsmeade, which was an all-magical village and which wore magic on its sleeve. It was a normal if sleepy West Country village, with hills around it on three sides, and while there were certainly magical people there (he'd already seen some people he recognized from Hogwarts) it wasn't _everywhere_.

The first hint of what they'd come there to see was a war memorial, the sort of thing you found in villages all over Britain, but when you got close to this particular one it turned out that it was actually a statue (if you were magical, anyway).

Looking up at statues of his parents, who would never get any older – and of _him_, but him as a human rather than a dragon – was just strange and uncomfortable and at the same time Harry was glad he had a chance to do it.

Then there was the graveyard behind the church. The names and dates told Harry that a lot more Wizarding families had once lived there, compared to now, and there was even the name Ignotus which Harry _thought_ was one of the names Dumbledore had mentioned once.

That was just what he saw on the way past, though, because Sirius led Harry right to the right gravestone. It was white marble, and carried the names of both James and Lily, and Harry just sort of stared for a long time trying to work out what he was thinking.

"I come here, sometimes," Sirius told him, and the words seemed to be coming from a long way away. "I don't know if it helps."

"I… think it's good that I had a look," Harry said, swallowing. "But I don't know what to say, or…"

"You don't need to say anything," Sirius told him. "And, speaking as James' best friend, I think they'd have been proud of you. If they can see you now, they _are_ proud of you."

He paused. "If, probably, slightly confused."

Something about that struck Harry as hilarious, and he started laughing. He was crying a bit as well, and he tried to stop himself laughing because it didn't seem right, and the two things ended up sort of tangled up together for a few minutes until he managed to get himself under control again.

"Sorry," he said, holding up a paw. "I… think I'm okay now."

"It's all right to be _not_ okay about this, Harry," Sirius assured him. "It took Andy months to get me to understand that, so you'd better pay attention because she often turns out to be right about this sort of thing."

Harry's ears went flat, and he nodded slowly.

"Do you want to see the house?" Sirius asked.

"Maybe," Harry replied, finding his voice a bit raw in his throat. "And then I might… go and spend some time somewhere else for a bit. To think."

"We're not far from the sea, here," Sirius told him. "You've got your wand, right?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed – it was in his backpack, because while wearing robes led to Muggles seeing him wearing robes for some reason _not_ wearing robes led to Muggles seeing him dressed normally. "And some money."

"Then if you can't find your way back to Godric's Hollow, just use the Knight Bus," Sirius advised. "I'll wait outside the church."

Harry had known Sirius for a long time – over three and a half years, now – but he didn't think he'd ever felt more gratitude towards his dogfather.

* * *

Seeing the house, blasted open and left unrepaired as a memorial, was… hard. Harry couldn't help but think about how his life might have been if he'd lived there for years longer, if he'd grown up normally – or whatever path his family would have taken, if he hadn't been orphaned at age one.

It was a peculiar feeling, to be wistfully nostalgic for something that had never happened – and which, in a more Discworld-y way, Harry was quite aware might not have been anything like as pleasant as he was imagining. It was like the bit in _Lords and Ladies_ where Granny Weatherwax punctured someone else imagining a life they could have had together by wistfully remembering them being caught in a house fire months after the wedding, which was sort of blunt but was a good reminder to keep in mind.

It helped, anyway.

Then Harry took off in a sudden whir of wings, wanting more than anything to be somewhere _else_ for a bit. He climbed until he was on the level of the hills that cupped Godric's Hollow for three sides, then higher – seeing what was probably Bristol to his east and north, an expanse of town not as big as London but quite big enough to be getting on with.

There was a motorway just on the other side of a ridge from Godric's Hollow, with a nice recognizable bit where the two halves of it split, and Harry decided that that would make a good landmark. Following it away from Bristol led to a somewhat smaller town, with a large beach onto what was probably the Severn Estuary and a long pier with a pagoda at the end.

Harry spent the next hour or so throwing stones into the sea, some of it with the assistance of some nearby Muggles. Almost inevitably a competition about skipping stones started, and while the waves spoiled it a bit Harry managed to get quite a few skips in a row.

He made sure to be appropriately appreciative when a boy of about five or six told him about how flat stones could skip better, and – largely by luck – the first one he threw after being told that went further than the last one before being told that.

All in all, the hour or so by the sea (in a town which turned out to be called Clevedon) was just what he needed to sort out his thoughts a bit, and by the end of it Harry was quite sure that going to visit Godric's Hollow had been a good idea.

* * *

AN:

* * *

There's actually quite a small bucket of places where Godric's Hollow could be, since it's in the West Country and somewhere that flying from it to Surrey involves going over Bristol.

I elected to put it in a three-sided hollow of hills east of Tickenham Golf Club. That puts it not far from Clevedon, where one of my grandmothers used to live.


End file.
